Pancreatic cancer is associated with medication changes prior to clinical diagnosis

Abstract

Patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) commonly develop symptoms and signs in the 1–2 years before diagnosis that can result in changes to medications. We investigate recent medication changes and PDAC diagnosis in Nurses’ Health Study (NHS; females) and Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS; males), including up to 148,973 U.S. participants followed for 2,994,057 person-years and 991 incident PDAC cases. Here we show recent initiation of antidiabetic (NHS) or anticoagulant (NHS, HFS) medications and cessation of antihypertensive medications (NHS, HPFS) are associated with pancreatic cancer diagnosis in the next 2 years. Two-year PDAC risk increases as number of relevant medication changes increases (P-trend <1 × 10−5), with participants who recently start antidiabetic and stop antihypertensive medications having multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio of 4.86 (95%CI, 1.74–13.6). These changes are not associated with diagnosis of other digestive system cancers. Recent medication changes should be considered as candidate features in multi-factor risk models for PDAC, though they are not causally implicated in development of PDAC.