So this is good news for us older people using biologics.
My apologies if this has already been reported in another thread.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AIBD/61968?xid=nl_mpt_AGA_confreporter_2016-12-12&eun=g5515850d41r
ORLANDO -- Elderly patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have an increased risk of cancer, but treatment with immunomodulators or biologics did not appear to further raise the risk, researchers reported.
Compared with patients ages 18 to 64, the hazard ratio for developing a malignancy among those 65 and older was 3.07 (95% CI 2.73-3.44, P≤0.0001), according to Nabeel Khan, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
"Cancer is an important concern for patients with IBD," she said in a poster session at the annual Advances in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 2016 conference here.
For older patients, overall disease management is complex because of comorbidities and polypharmacy, and some medical therapies are associated with immunosuppression and a potential for a greater risk of cancer. In addition, biologics are often skipped in older patients because they were excluded from the drugs' clinical trials, leaving the safety profile uncertain in this group.