Prior statin use halves risk of various cancers
- From: "Bill" <xxx@xxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 10:10:07 GMT
Note, the discussion of colon cancer which relates to another thread here.
Bill
_________________________________
Prior statin use halves risk of various cancers
May 19, 2005 Shelley Wood
Orlando, FL and Chicago, IL - New analyses of cancer rates among statin users
in a population of veterans suggests that statins can reduce the risk of
developing different types of cancer. A series of separate studies presented
this past week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2005 Annual
Meeting and Digestive Disease Week 2005 by researchers from the Louisiana
State University (LSU) Health Science Center suggest that statins may slash by
half the risk of at least six cancers.
The studies were based on data from the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in
Shreveport, LA, which houses a database containing health information on over
1.4 million veterans. Although the numbers of subjects varied in the six
studiesand the breast-cancer study examined only female veteransall used
health data obtained between October 1998 and June 2004.
In an interview with heartwire, study author Dr Vikas Khurana (LSU) said that
he and his colleagues had been looking at the role of statins in cancer
prevention for several years, starting with a study in colon-cancer patients
that indicated statins had no effect.
"When we looked at the data further, we realized we had not taken into
consideration whether patients were taking statins before the development of
cancer, and that was the reason for the lack of effect. Once we took patients
who had been taking statins before the development of cancer, we saw a risk
reduction across the board," he said.
Khurana says he and his coinvestigators have now seen benefits of statins in
seven different cancers, including the new results presented at the ASCO
meeting this past week. In each of the studies, the risk reduction seen in
patients who had been on statins was roughly 50%, even after controlling for a
range of factors appropriate to the different cancer types, such as age,
weight, smoking, alcohol use, diabetes, gender, and race.
Risk reduction associated with statin use, by cancer type
Cancer type
Number of patients
Odds ratio (95% CI)
Risk reduction (%)
Lung
484 226
0.52 (0.49-0.55)
48
Prostate
443 805
0.46 (0.45-0.48)
54
Breast
40 421
0.49 (0.38-0.62)
51
Pancreatic
484 226
NA
59
Esophageal
484 226
NA
56
To download table as a slide, click on slide logo below
Khurana explains that the focus of statin research has, until recently, been
on the lipid-lowering effects and less on the by-products of HMG-CoA reductase
inhibition.
"We never pay any attention to what all the mid-level products are," he says.
"It turns out that all those mid-level products are very important for
cell-cycle regulation." Laboratory studies, he adds, have suggested that
statins may interfere with the ability of cancer cells to replicate and
increase apoptosis in cancer cells.
Khurana says it is much too soon to think of prescribing statins to patients
at high risk for cancers, but he does think the evidence is strong enough to
help decision-making for certain types of patients.
"At this stage, people might start requesting statins for cancer protection,
but the drugs are obviously not indicated as such," he says. "However, if
there is a patient who has high cholesterol and a family history of cancer or
who is in some sort of high-risk cancer statethey have colon polyps, for
exampleyou might want to preferentially put them on statins instead of other
lipid-lowering agents."
He likens the evolving statin story to that of aspirin. "When we first started
using aspirin, it was only for pain. And it turned out to be a
cardioprotective agent, and it's now thought to protect against cancer also. I
think we just need to watch these developments very closely. We've known that
there were anticancer effects, but we cannot understand the magnitude of this
effect 100% without randomized controlled trials."
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