Journal article
Burden and correlates of multiple chronic infections and their associations with cancer incidence in Chinese adults: a large nested case-cohort study
- Abstract:
- Several oncogenic pathogens cause specific cancers, but uncertainties remain about many other chronic infections, combined pathogen effects and evidence from non European populations. We conducted a nested case-cohort study of ~30,000 site-specific incident cancer cases and >8,000 subcohort participants within the China Kadoorie Biobank. Baseline plasma was assayed for IgG antibodies against 47 antigens from 20 pathogens (16 viruses, 3 bacteria, 1 parasite) using an Automated Multiplex Serology assay. We described seroprevalence by age, sex, areas and lifestyle factors; estimated adjusted odd ratios for correlates of pathogen seropositivity in the subcohort using multivariable logistic regression and adjusted hazard ratios for overall and selected cancers using Prentice-weighted Cox models. Among subcohort participants, seroprevalence for most pathogens varied and was significantly associated with sex, region and birth cohort. Participants were seropositive for a mean of ~10 pathogens. Compared with seronegative participants, those seropositive for seven pathogens had significantly higher overall cancer risk, particularly for HCV (HR=2.18, 95%CI: 1.90-2.49), CMV (1.23, 1.08-1.40) and HSV-2 (1.14, 1.09-1.18) and HPV-16 oncogenes (e.g. E6: 1.57, 1.40-1.75). Lower risks were observed for HSV-1 (0.88, 0.81-0.95) and among those with fewer co-infections. There were expected positive associations of liver cancer with HBV (2.29, 2.06-2.54) and HCV (7.05, 4.31-11.54) and of stomach cancer with H. pylori (1.91, 1.68-2.17).In Chinese adults, multiple chronic infections were associated with risk of overall and certain selected cancers. Further research is warranted to investigate pathogen-specific and co-infection-related risks of site-specific cancers.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 385.9KB, Terms of use)
-
(Supplementary materials, zip, 1.7MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1002/ijc.70555
Authors
+ Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/027s68j25
- Grant:
- 2023ZD0510100
- 2023ZD0510101
- Programme:
- Noncommunicable Chronic Diseases National Science and Technology Major Project
+ National Natural Science Foundation of China
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/01h0zpd94
- Grant:
- 82388102
+ Cancer Research UK
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/054225q67
- Grant:
- C16077/A29186
- C500/A16896
+ British Heart Foundation
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02wdwnk04
- Grant:
- CH/1996001/9454
+ Medical Research Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/03x94j517
- Grant:
- MC_U137686851
- MC_UU_00017/1
- MC_UU_12026/2
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Journal:
- International Journal of Cancer More from this journal
- Pages:
- 1-14
- Publication date:
- 2026-05-18
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-04-28
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1097-0215
- ISSN:
-
0020-7136
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2412775
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2412775
- Deposit date:
-
2026-04-30
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Yang et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). International Journal of Cancer published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of UICC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record