Long-term gastric cancer risk in male smokers with atrophic corpus gastritis

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term gastric cancer risk in male smokers with and without atrophic gastritis.

Materials and methods: A total of 22,346 elderly male smokers participated in the Helsinki Gastritis Study between the years 1989 and 1993. Serum pepsinogen I (PGI) was measured for the men, and 2,132 men with low PGI (<25 µg/L; a marker of atrophic corpus gastritis) were invited to undergo gastroscopy because of increased gastric cancer risk. Endoscopy was performed to 1,327 men, who were followed up for a median of 13.6 years and a maximum of 25.3 years thereafter. In addition, the gastric cancer risk of men with low PGI was compared to that of the men with normal PGI and to the general Finnish male population of the same age.

Results: Thirty-five cases of gastric cancer were diagnosed in men with gastroscopy during the follow-up. The incidence rate was 1.94 per 1000 patient years. The men with a history of gastric surgery (n = 180) due to a benign cause had even higher gastric cancer incidence (3.2 per 1000 patient-years). Gastric cancer risk was highest in men with marked intestinal metaplasia in primary biopsies. Compared to the general Finnish male population of the same age, the cancer risk was 1.13 times higher in male smokers with normal serum PGI, and 2.43 times higher in men with low serum PGI.

Conclusion: In male smokers, atrophic gastritis and intestinal metaplasia increase the risk of gastric cancer.

Keywords:

• Atrophic gastritis
• gastric cancer
• smoking
• serum pepsinogen I
• PGI
• atrophy
• intestinal metaplasia
• dysplasia

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank Professor Pentti Sipponen for his valuable comments and histological analysis of biopsies; and Adjunct Professor Satu Männistö PhD and Project Coordinator Anne Söderqvist for their help with collecting and assessing the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Public Health Service (for Helsinki Gastritis Study).