To determine the risk of recurrent or a new malignancy with exposure to targeted disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in adults with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), axial spondyloarthritis (AS), or psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and a history of cancer.
We performed a systematic search of the literature for articles published up to June 2019 that investigated adults with RA, AS or PsA who had a history of cancer and received biologic or targeted synthetic DMARDs (bDMARDs or tsDMARDs. We compared the risk of relapse or occurrence of new cancer between patients with and without bDMARDs. Rate ratios (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated. The heterogeneity of the studies was evaluated by the Cochran Q test and the I² statistic.
We included 24 observational studies of chronic inflammatory arthritis; 12 were included in the meta-analysis of RA patients receiving bDMARDs. As compared with RA patients with a history of cancer and not receiving bDMARDs, for those receiving any bDMARD, the overall RR for risk of neoplasia was 1.09 (95%CI [0.92-1.32], p=0.31, I²=8%); with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors, it was 1.11 (95%CI [0.85-1.46], p=0.45, I²=48%); and with rituximab, it was 0.79 (95%CI [0.41-1.53], p=0.49, I²=0%). The RR for risk of recurrence for skin cancer was 1.32 (95% CI [1.02-1.72], p=0.04, I²=0%) and for breast neoplasia 1.21 (95% CI [0.84-1.72], p=0.31, I²=0%).
Apart from skin cancers including melanoma, the risk of recurrent or new cancer is not increased with the initiation of bDMARDs for RA as compared with no bDMARDs.