Familial associations of lymphoma and myeloma with autoimmune diseases

Many B-cell neoplasms are associated with autoimmune diseases (AIDs) but most evidence is based on a personal rather than a family history of AIDs. Here we calculated risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and multiple myeloma (MM) when family members were diagnosed with any of 44 different AIDs, or, independently, risk for AIDs when family members were diagnosed with a neoplasm. A total of 64 418 neoplasms and 531 155 AIDs were identified from Swedish nationwide health care records. NHL was associated with a family history of five AIDs, all increasing the risk, HL was associated with one AID increasing and three AIDs decreasing the risk while MM had no association. A family history of NHL was associated with eight, HL with seven and MM with seven different AIDs, nine increasing and 13 decreasing the risk. The present family data on B-cell neoplasms and AIDs show an approximately equal number of associations for risk increase and risk decrease, suggesting that inherited genes or gene-environment interactions may increase the risk or be protective. These results differed from published data on personal history of AID, which only report increased risks, often vastly higher and for different AIDs compared with the present data.