Good and bad news has come out of a lupus and cancer study recently reported to the American College of Rheumatology at its most recent Annual Scientific Meeting.

    Researchers observed 13,492 people with lupus from 24 medical centers for an average of nine years and compared these participants to people without lupus. The study showed that people with systemic lupus erythematosus are 1.15 times as likely to develop cancer as the general population and more than 2.5 times as likely to develop hematologic malignancies, such as lymphoma, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and leukemia. The study also shows that people with lupus who are younger than 40 have a particularly high risk (1.7 times more like to develop cancer than the general population).

    On the other hand, participants did display a significantly decreased risk of developing hormone-sensitive cancers, including breast cancer (0.7 times as likely as the general population, endometrial cancer (0.49 times the likelihood, and ovarian cancer (0.56 times the likelihood). However, Sasha R. Bernatsky, M.D., assistant professor, Department of Medicine, Divisions of rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology, McGill University, and co-principal investigator in the ongoing study, cautions, "Because female SLE patients may be at higher risk for cancers and pre-cancerous changes of the uterine cervix, they should try to undergo pap testing regularly once they become sexually active, especially if they take immunosuppressive drugs."

--Source: "People with Lupus Might Be at a Greater Risk for Cancer," American College of Rheumatology, via Newswise, November 1, 2010