Ranitidine and Risk of Bladder and Kidney Cancer: A Population-Based Cohort Study

In 2019, ranitidine was withdrawn due to high levels of N-nitrosodimethylamine, a probable human carcinogen. The risk of bladder and kidney cancer in ranitidine users, however, remains unclear.

In a Danish nationwide cohort study, we included adults (18 years or older) without previous cancer, who between 1996 and 2008 redeemed at least two prescriptions for ranitidine and, as two separate comparison cohorts, patients with at least two prescriptions for other H2-receptor antagonists (H2-blockers), or proton pump inhibitors (PPI). Follow-up for bladder or kidney cancer started at date of the second prescription and continued to date of cancer, death, emigration, or December 31, 2018, whichever occurred first. We used propensity scores for ranitidine use to compute stabilized inverse probability of treatment (sIPT) weights and used Cox regression to compute crude and weighted HRs.

We identified 31,393 initiators of ranitidine, 65,384 initiating other H2-blockers, and 509,849 initiating PPI. Compared with other H2-blockers, the crude HR for bladder cancer was 1.33 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.15-1.55], but sIPT weighting attenuated this to 1.11 (95% CI: 0.95-1.29). Compared with PPI initiators, the weighted HR was 1.24 (95% CI: 1.04-1.48). For kidney cancer, the weighted HR was 0.89 (95% CI: 0.72-1.10) compared with users of H2-blockers and 0.87 (95% CI: 0.67-1.13) compared with users of PPI.

Our findings did not suggest a substantial increase in bladder or kidney cancer occurrence in ranitidine users.

These findings are reassuring for previous ranitidine users.