More Study Needed on Melanoma Risk From Methotrexate
Source: AJMC, September 2022
Quantifying the risk of malignant melanoma from methotrexate use proved difficult in this new study, with the authors calling for larger studies with longer follow-up to guide future practice in the space.
Although investigators found a higher risk of incident cutaneous malignant melanoma among patients who took low-dose methotrexate compared with those who did not, they said this absolute risk is too small to draw definitive conclusions on a potential link and further study is need to distinguish the true degree of risk.
These results published recently in JAMA Dermatology, and they followed searches of MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.gov from inception to May 12, 2022, for case-control studies (n = 2), nested case-control studies (n = 2), cohort studies (n = 5), and randomized clinical trials (RCTs; n = 8) that compared patient outcomes from patients who were and were not exposed to methotrexate. Twelve studies were included in the primary analysis of 16,642 melanoma cases, with methotrexate indications for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease; of the original 17, “2 studies were excluded due to high risk of bias and 3 because the exposed arm included exposure to another immunomodulator,” the authors wrote.