Results from a large prospective study show that gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), which also causes heartburn symptoms, is linked to higher risks of various cancers of the larynx (or voice box) and esophagus. The study is published early online in CANCER, a revised journal of the American Cancer Society.
GERD, a gastrointestinal disorder that affects about 20 percent of U.S. adults, occurs when stomach acid flows back into the esophagus, where it can cause tension damage. Research shows that this damage could put patients at risk of developing a type of cancer called esophageal adenocarcinoma.
To provide further insight into this and potential links to other types of cancer, a team led by Christian C. Abnet, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes Health (NIH), a study of information on 490,605 adults enrolled in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Survey, a prospective study that sent questionnaires in 1995-1996 to 3.5 million AARP members, aged 50 to 71 years living there in California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, or Pennsylvania, or in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Georgia, and Detroit, Michigan.
Using Medicare claims data, the researchers estimated that 24 percent of participants had a history of GERD. Over the 16 years after participants entered the study, 931 patients developed esophageal adenocarcinoma, 876 developed laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, and 301 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma developed.
People with GERD had a twice as high risk of developing each of these types of cancer, and the increased risk was similar across groups categorized by gender, smoking status, and alcohol consumption. The researchers were able to reproduce the results when they limited analyzes to a Medicare subset of 107,258 adults.
The team estimated that about 17 percent of these cancers in the larynx and esophagus are associated with GERD.
This study alone is not sufficient to carry out specific actions by the public. Further research is needed to reproduce these findings and establish GERD as a risk factor for cancer and other diseases. Future studies are needed to assess whether treatments targeting GERD symptoms alter the similar risks. “
Christian C. Abnet, PhD, National Cancer Institute