Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Jan 24, 2025; 16(1): 99240
Published online Jan 24, 2025. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v16.i1.99240
Proton pump inhibitors and all-cause mortality risk among cancer patients
Arunkumar Krishnan, Carolin Victoria Schneider, Declan Walsh
Arunkumar Krishnan, Declan Walsh, Department of Supportive Oncology, Atrium Health Levine Cancer, Charlotte, NC 28204, United States
Arunkumar Krishnan, Department of Medicine, Section of Hematology and Oncology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27101, United States
Carolin Victoria Schneider, Department of Medicine III, Gastroenterology, Metabolic Diseases, and Intensive Care, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen 52074, Germany
Author contributions: Krishnan A contributed to the concept of the study and study design and was responsible for data acquisition and statistical analysis; Krishnan A and Schneider CV drafted the manuscript; Walsh D participated in the review and editing. All authors were involved with interpreting the data and critically revising the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: TriNetX data have been granted a waiver from the Western institutional review board as a federated network as only aggregated counts and statistical summaries of de-identified information were included.
Informed consent statement: Not applicable for de-identified data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Arunkumar Krishnan, MD, MS, Assistant Professor, Research Scientist, Department of Supportive Oncology, Atrium Health Levine Cancer, 1021 Morehead Medical Drive, Suite 70100, Charlotte, NC 28204, United States. dr.arunkumar.krishnan@gmail.com
Received: July 17, 2024
Revised: September 9, 2024
Accepted: October 11, 2024
Published online: January 24, 2025
Processing time: 104 Days and 17.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are commonly used medications. Recent studies have raised concerns regarding increased all-cause and cause-specific mortality with PPIs. However, limited studies have addressed this issue in cancer patients. In addition, an association between PPIs and the mortality risk in unselected cancer populations remains uncertain. We investigated the association between PPI use and all-cause mortality in patients diagnosed with cancer. PPI use among cancer patients was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality compared to non-users or histamine-2 receptor antagonist users. These results strongly suggest the need for cautious use of PPIs in cancer patients and indicate that alternative treatments should be considered when clinically feasible.