Researchers from the Northern California Cancer Center in Fremont found a marginally increased NHL risk among heavy users of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen, but no association between the disease and any other types of medication.
The study appears in the American Journal of Epidemiology. 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. The "striking" association between antibiotic use and NHL was seen for all subtypes of the disease. High NSAID use increased overall risk of NHL and of diffuse large B-cell NHL, but did not increase the likelihood of any other type of NHL.
The increasing use of antibiotics in the 20th century could explain the rise in NHL cases, if the drugs are in fact responsible for the association observed, researchers found. However, they add, their study was unable to determine if antibiotics and NSAIDs affected risk apart from the underlying inflammation, infections or susceptibility to infection.
