Opioids, cancer and mortality with Aleksi Hamina

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Dr Aleksi Hamina from the Norwegian centre for addiction research at the University of Oslo and the Niuvanniemi Hospital in Finland. They discuss a recent paper co-authored by Dr Hamina in which the team matched large national datasets to identify excess mortality among people who use drugs that can be attributed to cancers. They found increases in incidences and mortality according to liver, lung, larynx and pancreas cancers.

They highlight the impact of smoking, alcohol use and hepatitis, and discuss the policy implications of knowing the impact that these issues have on the mortality of people who use drugs. These include ensuring good access to healthcare and reviewing the thresholds for onwards referral when symptoms of cancer are identified.

“There is a more than twofold relative increase in cancer mortality in this population”

Original article: Increased cancer incidence and mortality among people with opioid use-related disorders: A nation-wide cohort study by Emil Kostovski and colleagues. Published in Addiction (2024).

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