Statins and metformin in digestive tract cancers : pattern of use and its association with disease progression

With the increasing life expectancy, the incidence of cancers is expected to rise worldwide. Consequently, cancer is thought to become the most important barrier to life expectancy in the future. Research on affordable and efficient alternatives to increase diagnosed individuals’ survival are required. The present thesis illustrates how linkage between a cancer registry and administrative databases can lead to high-quality epidemiological studies aiming to assess the association between commonly prescribed drugs and cancers survival. At the Belgian population level, the present work has shown a protective association between statins and metformin in esophageal as well as gastric cancers, respectively. Despite such encouraging results, the present work has also highlighted poor adherence to the two selected drugs despite a high volume of prescriptions.