Morgan Connaughton, “A Meta-Analysis on Prevalence of Organ-Specific Cancer and Hypertension”
Mentor: Mahsa Dabagh, Biomedical Engineering

Hypertension and cancer are two of the most problematic health conditions in the world. Hypertension, which is defined by the CDC as systolic blood pressure (SBP) ≥130mmHg and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) ≥80mmHg, effects about 45% of the American population and is a growing condition in other parts of the world, such as Asian and European countries. For cancer, there were 18 million new cancer cases worldwide in 2018 alone. There are several studies indicating a coexistence of these two conditions, specifically that hypertension, independently, is associated with an increased risk of cancer. In the present study, we are conducting a meta-analysis to assess which organ-specific cancers are promoted with hypertension. The severity and length of hypertension was included in our search of observational studies, which have been published starting 2014. Our initial analysis shows that there is a 1.70-fold increase in risk of renal cell carcinoma for patients with hypertension and that a 10mmHg increase in SBP and DBP showed a 10% and 20% increase in kidney cancer, respectfully. Also, there were an 11% increase in colorectal cancer risk in individuals with hypertension in men and a 15% increase chance of breast cancer risk in hypertensive women. These studies show that hypertension has caused an increase risk in cancer of the kidney, colorectal, prostate, endometrium, esophagus/laryngeal/oral, pancreas, liver, and bladder. Not only did these studies show an association between the two conditions, but they also showed that those who had hypertension and developed incidental cancer, also had a higher risk in cancer mortality. The association is still complex and unclear but evaluating the pathologies between the two would be the next step to understanding these associations to give new insight on how to treat and prevent tumor development and growth.