This Cooperative Agreement award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) under the Cancer Cause and Prevention Research program (CFDA 93.393) will fund the establishment and expansion of the Opioid Cohort Consortium (OPICO) to investigate the relationship between prescription opioid use and cancer risk.
The $586,334 project, running from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2029, will leverage and harmonize data from 19 prospective cohort studies, medication dispensing records, and healthcare databases across the U.S., Europe, and Australia. This will create a unique resource with high-quality data from over 1.7 million individuals, including more than 385,000 who used prescription opioids at baseline. The project will primarily assess whether prescription opioid use is associated with increased risk for cancers related to opium use, such as lung, bladder, esophageal, pancreatic, and laryngeal cancers. The results are expected to have a significant impact on developing national prevention strategies and early detection policies to address the public health burden of the opioid crisis.