Link Between Chronic Aspirin Use and Malignant Melanoma

Source: Dermatology Advisor, May 2018

Malignant melanoma may be associated with chronic once-daily aspirin exposure in men, but not in women, according to the results of a large, single-center cohort study from the Research on Adverse Drug events And Reports (RADAR) project published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
The investigators sought to determine whether a detectable risk for malignant melanoma exists following ?1 year of chronic aspirin use. Using RADAR methodology, the Northwestern Medicine Enterprise Data Warehouse (NMEDW) — a large, urban, single-center, medical record data repository of information on >5 million individuals — was searched between January 2005 and December 2006.
In the current study, inclusion criteria were age 18 to 89 years, no previous history of malignant melanoma, and a minimum follow-up of 5 years after continuous once-daily aspirin exposure (81 mg or 325 mg) for ?1 year. The control population included all patients within the same time frame with no documented aspirin use. The primary outcome was incident malignant melanoma diagnosis ?12 months following the index date using the diagnosis codes International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision: 172.0-172.9 and International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision: C43.0-C43.9.

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