Original articleRisk of lymphoma in patients with atopic dermatitis and the role of topical treatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Section snippets
Systematic literature search
We performed a systematic review of original studies investigating the risk of lymphoma in patients with AD published between 1980 and February 28, 2014. The Cochrane, PubMed, and Scopus databases were systematically searched. The literature search used the following combination of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): “atopic dermatitis AND lymphoma.” A second combination was systematically searched in the same databases: “atopic dermatitis AND neoplasm.” A third combination was systematically
Results
From an initial selection of 2046 references, 2019 articles were excluded after reading the title or abstract and 17 were excluded after reading the article. Fourteen articles were added by searching references lists from selected articles. In total, 24 references were retained. The study selection process is summarized in Fig 1. A systematic quantitative evaluation of the Newcastle–Ottawa scale was performed. According to this scale, the maximum number of quality stars a study publication can
Discussion
This systematic review indicates a modest increase in the risk of lymphoma in patients with AD compared to the general population, although the heterogeneity in case control studies prevents us from drawing a definite conclusion. This increased risk appears to be statistically significant in the meta-analysis of cohort studies,9, 19, 22, 23 with an overall RR of 1.43 (95% CI, 1.12-1.81). The use of highly potent TCSs was associated with a small increase in lymphoma risk, statistically
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Cited by (0)
Funding sources: None.
Dr Paul is consultant and investigator for Astellas and Novartis. Dr Meyer is a speaker for and on the advisory board of Roche and BMS, on the advisory board for Amgen, and is a speaker for MSD and AbbVie. None of the grants or honoraria were directly related to this study. Drs Legendre, Barnetche, Mazereeuw-Hautier, and Murrell have no conflicts of interest to declare.