The risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) related lymphoma is reduced to a significant extent when oral steroids are used for a period of two or more years, as per a recent study.

Furthermore, these positive effects were noticed regardless of when in the course of the disease the steroids were initially administered. It was, however, disclosed that these effects did not happen when steroids were taken for a period less than two years.

From Bio-Medicine.Org:

In individuals treated with steroids for over two years, the risk of rheumatoid arthritis-associated lymphomas was significantly reduced (relative risk 0.4; 0.2-0.7), whilst less than two years of steroids yielded no such reduced risk (relative risk 0.9; 0.5-1.5).

The most pronounced protective steroidal effect was observed in the diffuse large B-cell lymphoma subtype - the type of lymphoma most commonly associated with RA 1,2,3 with an odds ratio of 0.7 (0.4-1.0).

The study involved 378 patients with rheumatoid arthritis-associated lymphoma identified from the Swedish Hospital Register and the Cancer Register compared with 378 individually matched RA controls, i.e. patients with RA but without lymphoma.

Using data on steroid treatment type and duration along with inflammatory load collected from cases and controls, information on lymphoma type (where observed) was also collected. The lymphoma tissues were obtained from the pathology laboratories and were reclassified according to the most recent lymphoma classification, the World Health Organization classification.

Study author Dr Eva Baecklund of Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden, said that steroid treatment in the long term is often limited as a result of concerns about various side effects.