Pioglitazone and Bladder Cancer

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The association between pioglitazone and bladder cancer has not been investigated in Asians. We aimed to investigate this association. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 1,000,000 individuals were randomly sampled from the National Health Insurance database, and incident cases of bladder cancer during the period from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2009 were analyzed among 54,928 patients with type 2 diabetes and without previous bladder cancer. RESULTS: Among 165 incident case subjects, 10 (0.39%) were ever users and 155 (0.30%) were never users of pioglitazone (adjusted hazard ratio in full model 1.305 [95% CI 0.661–2.576]). All bladder cancer in ever users occurred within a duration of therapy <24 months, suggesting an early effect of pioglitazone on bladder cancer or late use of pioglitazone in high-risk patients. CONCLUSIONS: The association between pioglitazone and bladder cancer was not significant. However, confirmation of this finding is required because of the possible lack of statistical power owing to the small number of events.