Identification of carcinogenic and chemopreventive effects of prescription drugs
This large-scale, registry-based project will investigate whether drugs are associated with cancer incidence. The project will also develop a statistical tool for monitoring prescription drugs with regard to cancer risk.
About the project
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Project period: 01.08.2016 - 31.07.2026 (Active)
- Coordinating Institution: Folkehelseinstituttet
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Project Manager:
- Bettina Kulle Andreassen, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
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Project Participant:
- Bettina Kulle Andreassen, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Summary
This research project will identify associations between prescription drugs and the risk of cancer. We will investigate the connection between the drugs registered in the Prescription Register and a cancer later in life. The goal is to investigate for all combinations of drugs and cancer types whether the drug is associated with cancer incidence. The project will also develop a statistical tool for monitoring prescription drugs with regard to cancer risk, so that the analyses can easily be repeated regularly with updated figures later.
Background
Several studies have shown that there may be a link between some prescription drugs and cancer risk. However, because of the long follow-up time required to identify these associations, it is difficult to study this with traditional pharmaepidemiological methods. The aim of this project is to investigate all combinations of drugs and cancers, and look at both cancer incidence and cancer survival.
Study design and data material
The data material in this study mainly consists of data from the Norwegian Prescription Database and the Cancer Registry. The data material will consist of approximately 200 000 cancer cases from 2007-2015. Additional data are retrieved from Statistics Norway, the Medical Birth Registry and the Norwegian Patient Registry (see figure below).