University of Utah researchers found that younger B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL) survivors had a higher relative risk of developing age-related diseases than older B-NHL survivors five years or more after cancer diagnosis.
These results were published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Mia Hashibe, professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Utah, director of research and practice for the Division of Public Health, and a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator, was the study senior author. Krista Ocier, a postdoctoral researcher in the Hashibe lab, was the first author.
The authors previously established that younger NHL survivors have higher relative risk of specific heart and artery diseases than their older counterparts. In the present study, they evaluated the long-term risk of respiratory, renal, and other diseases related to aging among younger versus older NHL survivors.
The study included data from 2,129 B-NHL survivors from the Utah Cancer Registry diagnosed between 1997 and 2015. Using the Utah Population Database, the authors matched up to five
cancer-free individuals from the general population (8,969 individuals in total) with each B-NHL survivor based on sex, age, and state of birth.
They identified age-related disease outcomes through medical records from Intermountain Healthcare and the University of Utah, along with statewide health care facility data, and estimated the relative risk of these outcomes for younger and older B-NHL survivors (diagnosed at less than 65 years of age or more than 65 years of age, respectively) at least five years after cancer diagnosis.
Relative risks of acute renal failure, pneumonia, and nutritional deficiency were higher among younger than older NHL survivors compared with their respective general population cohorts. Compared with the general population, the risk of acute renal failure was increased 2.24-fold in younger survivors and 1.13-fold in older survivors; the risk of pneumonia was increased 2.42-fold in younger survivors and 1.44-fold in older survivors; and the risk of nutritional deficiencies was increased 2.08-fold in younger survivors and 1.25-fold in older survivors.
The researchers did not observe risk differences for other age-related diseases such as chronic kidney disease and osteoporosis between younger and older survivors, although NHL survivors have an overall elevated risk of these diseases.
