You are here

  • Home
  • Online First
  • Do autoimmune diseases influence the onset and progression of ovarian cancer? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Article Text

Article menu

other Versions

Download PDFPDF
Original research
Do autoimmune diseases influence the onset and progression of ovarian cancer? A systematic review and meta-analysis
  1. Roxanne Wouters1,2,
  2. Ann Vankerckhoven1,
  3. Wilhelmine Verreet3,
  4. Jolien Ceusters1 and
  5. An Coosemans1
  1. 1Department of Oncology, Leuven Cancer Institute, Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
  2. 2Oncoinvent AS, Oslo, Norway
  3. 3Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
  1. Correspondence to Dr An Coosemans, Department of Oncology, Leuven Cancer Institute, Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy, KU Leuven, Leuven 3000, Belgium; an.coosemans{at}kuleuven.be

Abstract

Objective Ovarian cancer remains the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. The immune system influences the onset and progression of ovarian cancer. Therefore, we aimed to study the behavior of ovarian cancer in patients with a pre-existing immune dysfunction, more specifically autoimmune disease.

Methods For this systematic review we carried out a systematic search of four electronic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL, Web of Science) with the two main search terms “autoimmunity” and “ovarian cancer” up to May 10, 2020. We included 36 different autoimmune diseases in our search. From the 4799 screened records, we identified 53 relevant articles for our review, of which 48 were used in our meta-analysis.

Results The incidence of ovarian cancer was significantly lower in patients with multiple sclerosis (standardized incidence ratio (SIR) 0.76, 95% CI 0.60 to 0.96). There was a tendency towards a lower risk of ovarian cancer in patients with systematic lupus erythematosus (SIR 0.89, 95% CI 0.68 to 1.15) and a tendency towards a higher risk in those with type 1 diabetes mellitus (SIR 1.49, 95% CI 0.98 to 2.28); however, this was not statistically significant. No conclusions could be drawn on mortality or the influence of immunosuppressive drugs used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and the incidence of ovarian cancer.

Conclusions Our study showed a decreased incidence of ovarian cancer in patients with multiple sclerosis. However, further investigation on the role of the immune system in the development of ovarian cancer in women with autoimmune diseases remains necessary.

  • ovarian cancer

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request. All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

https://doi.org/10.1136/ijgc-2022-003570

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request. All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors AC conceived the idea for the review. WV, AV, and RW collected and selected the articles for inclusion in the review. JC performed the statistical analysis. RW, AV, and WV wrote the article. JC and AC reviewed the manuscript. AC supervised the work. AC acts as the guarantor of this study.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests AV, WV, and JC declare no conflict of interest. RW is employed by Oncoinvent AS. AC is a contracted researcher for Oncoinvent AS and Novocure and a consultant for Sotio a.s.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.