Smoking Doubles Mortality Risk in Colorectal Cancer Survivors
Survivors of colorectal cancer who smoke cigarettes more than doubled their risk of death compared to survivors who did not smoke, according to a recent study.
While colorectal cancer has been associated with smoking in previous studies, evidence for survival after diagnosis of colorectal cancer remained unclear. 1
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To investigate, researchers evaluated 2548 participants who were newly diagnosed with invasive, non-metastatic colorectal cancer from a well of 184,000 adults in the Cancer Prevention Study II from the American Cancer Society.1,2
According to researchers, 1074 of the 2548 colorectal cancer survivors died during a mean of 7.5 years of follow-up. Of those, 453 were a direct result of colorectal cancer. 1,2
The data showed that patients who were smokers before diagnosis had more than twice the risk of mortality from all causes (RR, 2.12) and from colorectal cancer (RR, 2.14).1,2
In response to the study’s findings, investigators noted that smoking could thwart the efficacy of colorectal cancer treatment in patients, and that smokers could have more aggressive tumors than non-smokers. 1,
“Further research is needed to understand mechanisms whereby smoking may increase colorectal cancer–specific mortality and determine if quitting smoking after diagnosis lowers the risk of colorectal cancer–specific mortality,” 1 said the authors of the study.
The complete study is published in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
-Michelle Canales
References:
1. American Cancer Society. Smoking linked to higher risk of death among colorectal cancer survivors. February 2, 2015. http://pressroom.cancer.org/SmokingCRCsurvival. Accessed February 4, 2015.
2. Yang B, Jacobs EJ, Gapstur SM, et al. Active smoking and mortality among colorectal cancer survivors: The Cancer Prevention study II Nutrition Cohort. J Clin Oncol. 2015 February [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1200/JCO.2014.58.3831.