Approved Research

Association of psychiatric disorders with subsequent colorectal cancer: prospective cohort study of UK Biobank participants

Lay summary

Colon cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in the world, with approximately more than 1.8 million new cases being reported annually. It is therefore important to identify risk factors for patient with CRC, with the aim to decrease the risk of CRC and reduce healthcare cost. Psychiatric disorders, especially depression and anxiety are common public health problem that has been associated with a number of chronic health outcomes, including cancers. Although certain psychiatric disorders (ie, depression) are established in the risk of CRC, previous studies on certain psychiatric problems and CRC incidence, most of which used moderate sample sizes or gender-limited samples, were inconsistent, reporting positive or null findings. To our knowledge, no comprehensive assessment of the role of multiple types of clinically confirmed pre-existing psychiatric disorders on CRC susceptibility has been done to date using longitudinal data. Therefore, this research aims to determine the association between psychiatric disorders and the subsequent risk of CRC. In this project, we are planning to finish the analysis of clinical data from UK Biobank in about 6 months, in order to find out the significant role of multiple types of psychiatric disorders in colorectal cancer, wish to provide more explicit information for clinical use and for psychological interventions, and to refined cancer prevention.