Growth hormone replacement therapy reduces risk of cancer in adult with growth hormone deficiency: A meta-analysis

The risk of growth hormone on cancer in adult with growth hormone deficiency remains unclear. We carried out a meta-analysis to evaluate the risk of cancer in adult with and without growth hormone replacement therapy. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and WanFang databases up to 31 July 2016 for eligible studies. Pooled risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated using fixed-or random-effects models if appropriate. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used to assess the study quality. Two retrospective and seven prospective studies with a total of 11191 participants were included in the final analysis. The results from fixed-effects model showed this therapy was associated with the deceased risk of cancer in adult with growth hormone deficiency (RR=0.69, 95% CI: 0.59-0.82), with low heterogeneity within studies (I-2=39.0%, P=0.108). We performed sensitivity analyses by sequentially omitting one study each time, and the pooled RRs did not materially change, indicating that our results were statistically stable. Begger's and Egger's tests suggested that there was no publication bias (Z=-0.63, P=0.520; t=0.16, P=0.874). Our study suggests that growth hormone replacement therapy could reduce risk of cancer in adult with growth hormone deficiency.