The prevalence of cancer in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) who received rituximab: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the pooled prevalence of cancer in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) cases who were under treatment with rituximab. METHODS: We searched PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, Web of Science, and google scholar along with gray literature up to April 2021. The search strategy included the MeSH and text words as (("CD20 Antibody" AND Rituximab) OR "Rituximab CD20 Antibody" OR Mabthera OR "IDEC-C2B8 Antibody" OR "IDEC C2B8 Antibody" OR IDEC-C2B8 OR "IDEC C2B8" OR GP2013 OR Rituxan OR rituximab) AND ((Sclerosis AND multiple) OR (sclerosis AND disseminated) OR "disseminated sclerosis" OR "multiple sclerosis" OR "acute fulminating"). RESULTS: The literature search revealed 3577 articles, after deleting duplicates 2066 remained. For the meta-analysis, 22 studies were included. Totally, 15599 patients were enrolled while 133 cancers were detected. The pooled prevalence of cancer in MS patients under treatment with rituximab is 1in 100,000 (I2 = 99.9, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis show that the pooled prevalence of cancer in MS patients who received rituximab is 1 in 100,000 cases.