2799 The Association of Pancreato-Biliary Cancer With Lactose Intolerance

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The association of lactose intolerance (LI) with different malignancies including ovarian, prostate and colon cancers are reported in the literature with different hypotheses. Many components of dairy foods have been shown experimentally to carry protective effects against colon cancer. On the other hand, the hydrolyzing product of the milk sugar lactose has been suggested to be a risk factor for ovarian carcinoma. We aimed in our study to investigate the association of LI with pancreatic cancer (PC) and cholangiocarcinoma (ChC) using a large database. METHODS: We performed a cross sectional study using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database between 2004 and 2014. We identified adult patients (18-90 years) who were diagnosed with LI (study group) using appropriate ICD-9 codes. The control group was the patients who did not have a diagnosis of LI. We identified the diagnosis of PC and ChC in both study and control groups using the ICD-9 codes. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis were performed to assess the association between LI, PC and ChC. RESULTS: The total population was comprised of 71,360,501 patients, of which 57,909 (0.08%) were diagnosed with LI. LI patients were older (62 vs 51) with more females (61.5% vs 60.1%) and less African American patients (11.8% vs 14.8%) (P < 0.0001 for all). In addition, LI patients had more smoking (12.4% vs 12%), obesity (15% vs 8.9%) and inflammatory bowel disease (2.2% vs 0.8%) (P < 0.002). On the other hand, LI had less alcohol use (4.2% vs 3.8%) and diabetes mellitus (DM) (1.6% vs 4%) (P < 0.0001 for all). After adjusting for the age, gender, race, smoking, alcohol, obesity and inflammatory bowel disease the association between LI and PC were not statically significant (OR: 1.068, 95% CI, 0.909-1.048, P = 0.486). The same results were found for the association of LI and ChC (OR:0.855, 95% CI, 0.558-1.312, P = 0.474). CONCLUSION: There is no statically significant association between lactose intolerance, pancreatic cancer or cholangiocarcinoma.