Association between captopril, other antihypertensive drugs and risk of prostate cancer

Abstract

BACKGROUND: There has been some debate on the existence of an association between hypertension, antihypertensive medications and cancer risk. METHODS: We performed a nested case-control study to assess the association between the risk of prostate cancer and the use of the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)-inhibitor captopril, and other antihypertensive drugs. We used data from the General Practice Research Database in UK. RESULTS: We found an incidence rate of prostate cancer of 1.61 per 1,000 person-years among male patients aged 50-79 years old. Patients with a history of benign prostatic hyperplasia and/or prostatism carried a two-fold greater risk of prostate cancer than those without such antecedents. None of the other studied co-morbidities were associated with prostate cancer. We found that users of captopril had a relative risk of 0.7 (95% CI: 0.4-1.2) to develope prostate cancer. None of the other studied individual ACE-inhibitors shared a similar effect with the one observed for captopril. CONCLUSIONS: No clear association was apparent between the use of antihypertensive drugs and prostate cancer. However, specific focus on users of captopril showed a lower risk of subsequent prostate cancer. Further research is needed to explore this association.