Approved research

Association between cancer therapy and cardiovascular-related comorbidities in patients with cancer

Lay summary

Cancer therapy-induced cardiotoxicity is the leading cause of treatment-associated mortality among cancer survivors. Anticancer therapies may interact with pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors and accentuate cardiovascular morbidity among cancer survivors. We aim to determine: 1. Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in cancer patients 2. Impact of pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors on cancer survival 3. The extent to which cancer therapy, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and lifestyle, modifies the association between pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors and cancer survival 4. Association between cancer therapy and risk of hypertension, diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular disease among cancer survivors without concurrent comorbidities UKBIOBANK aims to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening illnesses including cancer. Knowledge on baseline cardiovascular risk profile and competing mortality risks in cancer patients (cardiovascular mortality versus cancer mortality) will aid tailoring of cancer therapy. In patients with considerable risk of developing cardiovascular disease, physicians may be able to choose adjuvant cancer therapies with higher cardiac safety profile. Furthermore, it will be highly relevant to determine for which patients with cancer will preventive cardiovascular intervention, lead to meaningful reduction in late cardiac complications, and mortality. This research will improve management of cancer patients and their survival. Linkage between UK Biobank and cancer registries allows identification of participants with newly diagnosed cancers. The baseline presence of cardiovascular risk factors (diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, obesity, smoking, and family history of premature coronary heart disease) will be determined in these patients. Subsequent linkage with death registries will allow estimation of overall and disease-specific survival of cancer survivors. Linkage with primary care data and in-patient hospital admissions data will enable assessment of incidence of hypertension, diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease in these survivors. We will compare the survival of cancer patients with cardiovascular risk factors against those without. We intend to include all participants of the UK Biobank cohort with either prevalent, or incident cancers.