By MyHealthNewsDaily staff
MyHealthNewsDaily
Cancer patients may lower their risk of dying from the disease if they take the cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, a new study from Denmark suggests.

The patients who took statins were about 15 percent less likely to die from their cancer than other cancer patients were, the researchers reported after studying the records of nearly 300,000 people.

"We observed an association between statin use at the time of diagnosis and a reduced risk of cancer-related mortality," the researchers wrote in their study, appearing tomorrow (Nov. 8) in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It's not exactly clear how statins would lower the cancer death rate, and the researchers and others cautioned that further study is needed to determine whether statins were truly the cause of the lower risk and whether other factors were involved.

The researchers noted, however, that studies have shown that by blocking cholesterol production and certain protein interactions in cells, statins may influence the ability of cells to proliferate and migrate through the body. So statins could be reducing the ability of cancer cells to metastasize, they wrote.

The researchers, led by Sune Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen, used data from two databases — one that tracks information on all cancer patients in Denmark, and another that tracks drug prescriptions. They looked only at cancer patients who were at least 40 years old. (Younger patients are unlikely to take statins.)

The study included people diagnosed with cancer between 1995 and 2007. The researchers compared death rates between the group's nearly 19,000 statin users and the 277,000 others. They tracked the patients through 2009, and over that time 162,000 died from cancer.

Previous research of patients with advanced prostate cancer also showed a decrease in fatal cases among those taking statins, and studies of prostate and breast cancer patients have linked the drugs with lower rates of cancer recurrence.

However, the researchers noted studies of cancer-free people taking statins for their cardiovascular health benefits have not shown that the drugs bring any decrease in the risk of developing or dying of cancer.

The researchers concluded that clinical trials of statins in cancer patients are needed. Further studies could to track current patients over time to better determine whether statin use prolongs survival, they said.

Dr. Neil Caporaso, a genetic epidemiologists at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., said  whether statins, which are widely prescribed, may reduce deaths from cancer is an "important public health question," but he urged caution in interpreting the findings.

Writing in an editorial accompanying the study in the journal, Caporaso noted that the study did not account for smoking, which could be linked with both a person's need to take statins and his likelihood of dying from cancer. And while the researchers took into account factors that affect cancer patients' death rates, such as age and cancer stage, they could not account for all variables that might affect mortality, Caporaso said.

Caporaso disagreed that now is the time to being trials of statins in cancer patients, saying current trials of statins could first be used to determine which drugs and doses may combat cancer, and for how long treatment might need to be undertaken in order to see an effect. 

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A new study suggests that statin drugs, widely used to lower cholesterol, might lower people’s risk of cancer, too.

Many studies suggest that statins affect more than just cholesterol. For a while, it wasn’t clear whether the pills, which include Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor, raised or lowered the risk of cancer. But recent studies have pointed to the possibility that they may actually lower the risk of some cancers.

Gabriel Chodick and colleagues at Maccabi Healthcare Services, a big health maintenance organization in Israel, looked at the health records of everyone prescribed a statin between 1998 and 2006 – more than 200,000 people. They looked at their medical records from then until 2007.

People who took statins the most consistently and for the longest time had a considerably lower risk of cancer over the seven years studied, they reported. The risk was reduced by 31 percent for lymphomas, they report in Preventing Chronic Disease, a journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Our study demonstrated that persistent use of statins is associated with a lower overall cancer risk,” they wrote.  “In light of widespread statin consumption and increases in cancer incidence, the association between statins and cancer incidence may be relevant for cancer prevention.”

Over the time studied, 8,662 people were diagnosed with cancer. Those who took their prescribed statins 86 percent of the time or more were the least likely to be diagnosed with cancer over an average of five years.

It’s not the first study to show a lower cancer risk but it may be one of the largest. In December 2011 researchers found that men who died of prostate cancer were half as likely to have taken a statin than men who didn’t have prostate cancer. But to truly prove that statins reduced cancer risk, researchers would have to do what is known as a randomized study, randomly assigning people to take statins or not and then seeing which group developed more cancers over time.

Statins cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by reducing artery-clogging cholesterol. They also affect the lining of the arteries and lower inflammation. They’ve been shown to reduce the risk of death from influenza and pneumonia, as well, and may protect smokers.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs are the most commonly prescribed medication in the U.S. according to the  IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, with 255.4 million prescriptions written in 2010. Antidepressants came in No. 2, with 253.6 million prescriptions.

About a quarter of adults 45 and older take statins and some cardiologists have long joked about putting them in the U.S. water supply. But there are good reasons not to. They can cause muscle pain and, in about one in 10,000 patients, can cause a dangerous muscle-damaging condition called rhabdomyolysis. They can also affect the liver.

In February, the Food and Drug Administration warned that statins can cause memory loss and diabetes.

But on Thursday,a team at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston reported in the Lancet medical journal that the benefits of statin therapy exceed the small diabetes risk.

“Our data indicate that the risk of developing diabetes while on statin therapy was limited almost entirely to people who had at least one major risk factor for diabetes prior to initiating statin therapy,” said Dr. Paul Ridker, who led the study.

Related links:

Benefits of statins outweigh diabetes risks

More Americans have chronic conditions

FDA beefs up statin warnings

By Robert Bazell
Chief science and health correspondent
NBC News

Not long ago, statins were jokingly promoted by some doctors with a “put them in the drinking water” argument. Physicians and drug company experts suggested that the ubiquitous cholesterol-lowering drugs -- including Lipitor, Mevacor, Crestor and Zocor -- should be sold over the counter like cold medications, or offered to everyone above a certain age. The medications appeared so beneficial to health and seemed so free of side effects.

But on Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration issued a new health alert requiring the drugs carry labels warning about confusion and memory loss, elevated blood sugar leading to Type 2 diabetes, and muscle weakness.

“These warnings should put an end to the all the silliness about giving the drugs to everyone,” says Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Warnings for diabetes, memory loss added to statins

There is no question that statins -- the most profitable and among the most prescribed drugs ever -- have saved or prolonged millions of lives and will continue to do so. Most people at elevated risk for heart disease should be taking statins. The big issue now will center on determining whose risk is low to moderate and may not need medication.

The not-so-well-kept secret is that a daily dose of statin allows millions to eat whatever fatty food they like without worrying how it affects their cholesterol levels. That’s a tempting proposition. At the same time, drug companies find nothing more appealing than a pill that healthy people take daily for the rest of their lives. These two motivations combine to get million on statins who may not need them -- not much of a problem if there are no risks. But now we have evidence there is.

The FDA approved the first statin, Merck’s lovastatin, in 1987. Other companies produced their own versions over the last two decades as evidence of the drugs’ effectiveness continued to accumulate, adding to their popularity.  But, early on, plenty of side effects warnings popped up. 

Every time NBC News reported on statins I would receive many communications from viewers who had suffered the muscle-weakening condition, known as rhabdomyolysis, after taking the medication. When they stopped the drug, their muscles usually returned to normal. Doctors who frequently prescribe statins report that a certain percentage -- the best guess is about ½ to 1 percent -- suffer the muscle problems. That’s a rare occurrence as side effects go, but when many millions are taking the drugs, the numbers add up.

As for elevated blood sugar and memory problems, both conditions have been reported for years, but it is harder to guess how widespread the complications are. In fact, last month, a survey of 150,000 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative -- the government’s gigantic study that ended most hormone replacement -- found that older women taking statins were 48 percent more likely to develop diabetes. (The researchers tried to control for obesity and other risk factors.)

Because most people who take statins tend to be older, they’re already more likely to develop diabetes or memory problems. The only test to accurately measure the risk from statins would be a long, controlled trial of thousands of people at low risk for heart disease where half get the drug and half get a placebo. No drug company will pay for it.   

Astra Zeneca’s Crestor remains the only statin still under patent protection, and it would be foolish for that company to go looking for harmful side effects. The government’s resources for big expensive studies grow ever more scarce. We may never know the true danger, but at least now the drugs have labels telling patients and doctors to be aware of them

Why did the FDA chose to label the drugs now when the danger signs have been around for years? There is no official answer, but the officials in charge of the FDA now have shown far more willingness to be honest about public health risks than many of their recent predecessors.

As for whether you or a loved one should be taking a statin drug: This is certainly not an automatic decision, but definitely a subject for a discussion with your physician. Because of the FDA’s labeling actions that decision should now be far better informed.