Asthma inhalers may raise risk of prostate cancer

Medicines used by thousands of people to treat their asthma can raise the risk of prostate cancer, found researchers in a new study. Men who usually used inhaler steroid to manage their asthma are nearly forty percent more prone to develop tumour than those who do not have asthma.

Asthmatic people who regularly intake another type of inhaler known as bronchodilator to ease wheezing are thirty-six percent more at risk of developing the condition. The major risk seems to be among males with stern form of asthma that recurrently require treatment with steroid injections and tablets.

In such people the risk of prostate cancer is increased by seventy percent. Patients of asthma usually used two types of bronchodilators. One which gives immediate relief and another that is used once or twice a day to prevent asthma from developing in the first place.

The research study was carried out by the research team from Melbourne, Australia. The team was determined to find the link between asthma and prostate cancer because both occurred due the inflammation in the body. They studied one thousand one hundred and seventy-nine males who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and scrutinized how many had a history of asthma.

It was found that asthma destined a twenty-five percent increased risk of developing tumours in males, reported the results published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. The risk was even higher if they were on drugs. Researchers confessed that it was tricky to unravel the effects of asthma drugs from the outcome of just having the condition itself.

Cancer experts strained results were first round, from a small study, and required to be confirmed by much larger studies before any change in asthma drug use could be measured. The outcomes are quite weak and they could be a statistical coincidence, said Dr Jodie Moffat from Cancer Research UK.