STUDY: Statins May Decrease Cancer Risk

By Dave Quaile, /alert Contributor
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Statins may reduce the risk of cancer in humans in a pathway unrelated to cholesterol, according to a study recently published in eLife

While there has been previously reported data that shows statins may reduce the risk of heart attack and other CV events, the effects of statin therapy on cancer is underexplored. 

"Previous laboratory studies have suggested that lipids including cholesterol play a role in the development of cancer, and that statins inhibit cancer development," Paul Carter, MD, Cardiology Academic Clinical Fellow at the Department of Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, UK, said in a press release. "However, no trials have been designed to assess the role of statins for cancer prevention in clinical practice. We decided to assess the potential effect of statin therapy on cancer risk using evidence from human genetics."

To explore the effects of statin therapy as a preventative cancer treatment, Carter and colleague studied genetic variants that mimic the effect of statins using a technique known as Mendelian randomization in UK Biobank, a large study of UK residents that tracks the diagnosis and treatment of many serious illnesses. 

The researchers used Mendelian randomization to assess associations between genetically predicted levels of a risk factor and a disease outcome, in order to predict the extent to which that risk factor causes the outcome. According to the release, this is the first Mendelian randomization analysis of lipid subtypes for a range of cancers across the human body.

Carter and colleagues used data on the association of lipid-related genetic variants with the risk of overall cancer and 22 cancer types in 367,703 individuals in UK Biobank. A total of 75,037 of patients included in the study had a cancer event.

The study showed that variants in the HMGCR gene region were associated with overall cancer risk, suggesting that statins could lower overall cancer risk. They also found that variants in gene regions that represent other cholesterol-lowering treatments that work differently to statins were not associated with cancer risk, and genetically predicted LDL-cholesterol was not associated with overall cancer risk.

According to the researchers, the study results suggest that inhibiting HMGCR with statins may help reduce cancer risk though non-lipid lowering mechanisms, and that this role may apply across cancer sites and the effect may operate through other properties of statins, including dampening down inflammation or reducing other chemicals produced by the same cellular machinery which synthesizes cholesterol.

Although the study had a large sample size of over 360,000 participants, the researchers pointed out that there are limitations to the study including a lack of outcome events needed to rule out the possibility of moderate casual effects in multiple cancer types. 

"While there is evidence to support our assumption that genetic variants in relevant gene regions can be used as proxies for pharmacological interventions, our findings should be considered with caution until they are confirmed in clinical trials. However, our work highlights that the effectiveness of statins must be urgently evaluated by large clinical trials for potential use in cancer prevention," Stephen Burgess, MD, Group Leader at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, part of the University of Cambridge, said in the release. "While statins do have some adverse effects, our findings further weight the balance in favor of these drugs reducing the risk of major disease."

 

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