Low-dose aspirin and incidence of lung carcinoma in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Hong Kong: A cohort study.

Abstract

BackgroundEvidence suggests that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with a higher risk of lung carcinoma. Using a territory-wide clinical electronic medical records system, we investigated the association between low-dose aspirin use (≤160 mg) among patients with COPD and incidence of lung carcinoma and the corresponding risk of bleeding.Methods and findingsThis is a retrospective cohort study conducted utilizing Clinical Data Analysis Reporting System (CDARS), a territory-wide database developed by the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was used to balance baseline covariates between aspirin nonusers (35,049 patients) with new aspirin users (7,679 patients) among all eligible COPD patients from 2005 to 2018 attending any public hospitals. The median age of the cohort was 75.7 years (SD = 11.5), and 80.3% were male. Competing risk regression with Cox proportional hazards model were performed to estimate the subdistribution hazard ratio (SHR) of lung carcinoma with low-dose aspirin and the associated bleeding events. Of all eligible patients, 1,779 (4.2%, 1,526 and 253 among nonusers and users) were diagnosed with lung carcinoma over a median follow-up period of 2.6 years (interquartile range [IQR]: 1.4 to 4.8). Aspirin use was associated with a 25% lower risk of lung carcinoma (SHR = 0.75, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.65 to 0.87, p = ConclusionsIn this study, we observed that low-dose aspirin use was associated with a lower risk of lung carcinoma and lung carcinoma-related mortality among COPD patients. While aspirin was not associated with an increased risk of UGIB, the risk of hemoptysis was elevated.