Heavy Antibiotic Use May Raise Lymphoma Risk

Using antibiotics more than 10 times in childhood increases the likelihood of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), a cancer that affects the body’s lymphatic system, new research suggests.Dr. Ellen T. Chang of the Northern California Cancer Centre in Fremont and her colleagues also found a marginally increased NHL risk among heavy users of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil), but no association between the disease and any other types of medication.Given the rising incidence of NHL, Chang and her team note in the American Journal of Epidemiology, a number of studies have investigated whether certain medications increase the risk of the disease. But results have been inconclusive, with only strong immunosuppressive drugs consistently being tied to NHL. Because a number of medical conditions also may be associated with NHL, they add, the question of whether the drug or the underlying condition is involved has complicated matters further.To investigate, the researchers looked at data from the Scandinavian Lymphoma Etiology study, which included 3,055 patients with NHL who were compared with 3187 healthy subjects drawn from Danish and Swedish population registers.

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