A study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases examined the association between sepsis and subsequent risk of cancer.
Researchers conducted a case-control study among U.S. adults using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare linked database. They assessed 1.8 million cases with a first cancer diagnosis in SEER during the 1992 to 2013 period and 200,000 cancer-free controls from a 5 percent random sample of Medicare beneficiaries. They identified sepsis using inpatient Medicare claims.
The study shows sepsis was significantly associated with increased risk for
• Colon cancer
• Rectum cancer
• Liver cancer
• Lung cancer
• Cervix cancer
• Acute myeloid leukemia
• Chronic myeloid leukemia
• Myelodysplastic syndrome
Sepsis was also linked with a decreased risk for:
• Breast cancer
• Kidney cancer
• Thyroid cancer
• Melanoma
• Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
• Follicular lymphoma