Statins have neutral effect on cancer incidence
Statins have a neutral effect on the risk of developing or dying from cancer, conclude the authors of a paper published in JAMA this week
(2006;295:74).
They conducted a meta-analysis of 26 randomised controlled trials involving
86,936 participants to investigate the effect of statin therapy on cancer
incidence and cancer death. The researchers also looked at the effect
of statins on specific cancers and at whether hydrophilic, lipophilic,
naturally derived or synthetically derived statins affected incidence
of cancer. Trial sizes ranged between 151 and 20,536 participants, mean
age was between 50 and 76 years, and most participants were male. Duration
of follow-up was between 1.9 and 10.4 years. The studies evaluated atorvastatin,
cerivastatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, pravastatin or simvastatin versus
placebo or standard care.
The researchers did not observe any significant differences in incidence
of cancer or cancer death between patients receiving statins and controls
for any of the prespecified cancer subtypes (breast, prostate, respiratory,
gastrointestinal, colon and skin). “When we limited the analysis
to individual statins, statins with high or low lipophilicity, or natural
or synthetic statins, no significant differences were observed versus
control,” they add. |
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