Patients with
gout are more likely to develop most
cancers than subjects without
gout.
Colchicine has been used for the treatment and prevention of
gouty arthritis and has been reported to have an anticancer effect in vitro. However, to date no study has evaluated the relationship between
colchicine use and incident
cancers in patients with
gout. This study enrolled male patients with
gout identified in Taiwan's National Health Insurance Database for the years 1998 to 2011. Each
gout patient was matched with 4 male controls by age and by month and year of first diagnosis, and was followed up until 2011. The study excluded those who were diagnosed with diabetes or any type of
cancer within the year following enrollment. We calculated hazard ratio (HR), aged-adjusted standardized incidence ratio, and incidence of 1000 person-years analyses to evaluate
cancer risk. A total of 24,050 male patients with
gout and 76,129 male nongout controls were included. Patients with
gout had a higher rate of incident all-cause
cancers than controls (6.68% vs 6.43%, P = 0.006). A total of 13,679 patients with
gout were defined as having been ever-users of
colchicine and 10,371 patients with
gout were defined as being never-users of
colchicine. Ever-users of
colchicine had a significantly lower HR of incident all-cause
cancers than never-users of
colchicine after adjustment for age (HR = 0.85, 95% CI = 0.77-0.94; P = 0.001). In conclusion,
colchicine use was associated with a decreased risk of incident all-cause
cancers in male Taiwanese patients with
gout.