Associations Between Sexual Orientation and Overall and Site-Specific Diagnosis of Cancer: Evidence From Two National Patient Surveys in England.
Publication Date
2017-11Journal Title
Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology
ISSN
0732-183X
Publisher
American Society of Clinical Oncology
Volume
35
Issue
32
Pages
3654-3661
Language
English
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Physical Medium
Print-Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Saunders, C., Meads, C., Abel, G. A., & Lyratzopoulos, G. (2017). Associations Between Sexual Orientation and Overall and Site-Specific Diagnosis of Cancer: Evidence From Two National Patient Surveys in England.. Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, 35 (32), 3654-3661. https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2017.72.5465
Abstract
Purpose
To address evidence gaps on the risk of cancer in people from sexual minorities.
Patients and methods
We used data from 796,594 population-based English General Practice Patient Survey (GPPS) responders to explore the prevalence of self-reported diagnosis of cancer in the last 5 years among sexual minorities compared with heterosexual women and men.
We analysed data from 249,010 hospital-based English Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES) responders with sexual orientation as a binary outcome, and ICD-10 diagnosis as covariate (38 different common and rarer cancers, with breast and prostate cancer the baseline categories for women and men, respectively) to examine whether people from sexual minorities are over- or under-represented among different cancer sites.
For both analyses, we used logistic regression, stratified by sex and adjusted for age.
Results
A previous diagnosis of cancer in the past 5 years was more commonly reported by male GPPS responders who endorsed gay/bisexual orientation compared with heterosexual men, OR(95%CI) 1.31(1.15-1.49), p<0.001; without evidence of a difference between lesbian/bisexual compared with heterosexual women 1.14(0.94-1.37), p=0.19.
For most common and rarer cancer sites (30/33 in women, 28/32 in men), the odds of specific cancer site diagnosis among CPES respondents appeared independent of sexual orientation. There were however notable differences in infection-related (HIV, HPV) cancers. Gay/bisexual men were over-represented among men with Kaposi’s Sarcoma 48.2(22.0-105.6), anal 15.5(11.0-21.9), and penile cancer 1.8(0.9-3.7). Lesbian/bisexual women were over-represented among women with oro-pharyngeal cancer 3.2(1.7-6.0).
Conclusions
Large scale evidence indicates that the distribution of cancer sites does not vary substantially by sexual orientation, except for some HPV and HIV associated cancers. The findings highlight the importance of HPV vaccination in heterosexual and sexual minority populations.
Keywords
Humans, Neoplasms, Prevalence, Risk, Sexual Behavior, Minority Groups, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Middle Aged, England, Female, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires
Sponsorship
GL is supported by a Cancer Research UK Advanced Clinician Scientist Fellowship (C18081/A18180).
Funder references
National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) (via Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)) (unknown)
Embargo Lift Date
2100-01-01
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2017.72.5465
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/265844
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)
Licence URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/