Normal gastrointestinal mucosa at biopsy and subsequent cancer risk: nationwide population-based, sibling-controlled cohort study

BACKGROUND: While individuals with normal gastrointestinal (GI) mucosa on endoscopy have a lower risk of colorectal cancer, risks of other cancers remain unexplored. METHODS: Through Sweden’s 28 pathology departments, we identified 415,092 individuals with a first GI biopsy with histologically normal mucosa during 1965–2016 and no prior cancer. These individuals were compared to 1,939,215 matched reference individuals from the general population. Follow-up began 6 months after biopsy, and incident cancer data were retrieved from the Swedish Cancer Register. Flexible parametric model was applied to estimate cumulative incidences and hazard ratios (HRs) for cancers. We also used full siblings (n = 441,534) as a secondary comparison group. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 10.9 years, 40,935 individuals with normal mucosa (incidence rate: 82.74 per 10,000 person-years) and 177,350 reference individuals (incidence rate: 75.26) developed cancer. Restricting the data to individuals where follow-up revealed no cancer in the first 6 months, we still observed an increased risk of any cancer in those with a histologically normal mucosa (average HR = 1.07; 95%CI = 1.06–1.09). Although the HR for any and specific cancers decreased shortly after biopsy, we observed a long-term excess risk of any cancer, with an HR of 1.08 (95%CI = 1.05–1.12) and a cumulative incidence difference of 0.93% (95%CI = 0.61%-1.25%) at 30 years after biopsy. An elevated risk of gastric cancer, lung cancer, and hematological malignancy (including lymphoproliferative malignancy) was also observed at 20 or 30 years since biopsy. Sibling analyses confirmed the above findings. CONCLUSION: Individuals with a histologically normal mucosa at biopsy and where follow-up revealed no cancer in the first 6 months, may still be at increased risk of cancer, although excess risks are small. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-022-09992-5.