Dopamine agonists and risk of lung cancer in patients with restless legs syndrome

Purpose: To examine the association between long-term use of dopamine agonists (DAs) and the risk of lung cancer in patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS).Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using Optum Clinformatics (R) database. We included adults >= 40 years diagnosed with RLS during the study period (1/2006-12/2016). Follow-up started with the first RLS diagnosis and ended on the earliest of: incident diagnosis of lung cancer, end of enrollment in the database or end of the study period. The exposure of interest was cumulative duration of DAs use, measured in a time-varying manner. We constructed a multivariable Cox regression model to estimate HRs and 95% CIs for the association between lung cancer and cumulative durations of DA use, adjusting for potential confounding variables.Results: We identified 295 042 patients with a diagnosis of RLS. The mean age of the cohort was 62.9; 66.6% were women and 82.3% were white. The prevalence of any DA exposure was 40.3%. Compared to the reference group (no use and <= 1 year), the crude HRs for lung cancer were 1.16 (95% CI 0.99-1.36) and 1.14 (95% CI 0.86- 1.51) for 1-3 years and > 3 years of cumulative DA use, respectively. The adjusted HR for lung cancer was 1.05 (95% CI 0.88-1.25) for 1-3 years and 1.02 (95% CI 0.76-1.37) for > 3 years of cumulative DA use, respectively.Conclusions: At typical doses for the clinical management of RLS, long-term DA use was not associated with risk of lung cancer.

Automated summary

This study examined the association between long-term use of dopamine agonists (DAs) and the risk of lung cancer in patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS). The results showed that long-term DA use at typical doses for RLS management did not increase the risk of lung cancer.