Fred Derf Veteran Posted May 17, 2005 Veteran Share Posted May 17, 2005 May 16, 2005. 06:39 AM Statins may cut risk of cancers Anti-cholesterol drug widely used Users less prone to 3 types of disease MICHAEL SMITH SPECIAL TO THE STAR ORLANDO, Fla.?A widely used class of cholesterol-lowering drugs may also reduce the risk of three types of cancer by about half, researchers told a cancer meeting. The statin drugs are used mainly to reduce the accumulation of cholesterol in arteries, which can lead to heart disease and stroke. But three reports given at the annual meeting of the American Association for Clinical Oncology suggest thstatin drugs may also prevent lung, prostate and breast cancerb>, said Ruby Kochhar, a medical oncologist at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va. The reports suggest that &quostatins prevent healthy cells from transforming into cancerous cells,b>" Kochhar said. "There was a protective effect in every type of cancer studied."The statin drugs are sold under the brand names Lescol, Lipitor, Mevacor, Pravachol, and Zocor.b> The new studies used health information gathered by the U.S. Veterans Administration on more than 1.4 million people. In the case of breast cancer, researchers compared statin use over a six-year period among 556 female veterans with breast cancer and 39,865 without the diseaseThose who used statins were 51 per cent less likely to get breast cancer than non-usersb>, said Vikas Khurana, an assistant professor of medicine at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, La. A similar result was true for lung cancer, Khurana said. Statin users were 48 per cent less likely to get the disease than non-users. The researchers studied nearly 450,000 people, including 45,000 women. The rate was slightly higher for prostate cancer. Rakesh Singal, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Miami, saistatin users were 54 per cent less likely to get the disease than non-usersb>. The longer a man took the drugs, the greater the benefit. Those who took them for a year or less had almost no protection, whilthose who took them for more than four years saw their risk fall by nearly 90 per centb>. One possible limitation for the study is that its data on statin use is based on prescription records, Singal said, so it's not possible to say whether the men who were given the drugs actually took them properly.The new studies add to the evidence that statins have an anti-cancer effect.b> Just last month, at a cancer conference in Anaheim, researchers reported that the drugs halved the risk of developing advanced prostate cancer, although they did not find an effect on the overall risk of getting the disease in the first place. Singal said that may be because the earlier study did not have enough subjects to discover the preventive effect. It makes sense that statins would help prevent cancer, said physician Paul Bunn, director of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center in Denver. &quoThe drugs work by blocking an enzyme involved in cholesterol production,b>" he said. &quoThat blockade turns off a series of proteins involved in making cholesterol and "some of these same proteins are used by cells to promote tumour growthb>."It's too early to start recommending statins for cancer preventionb>, Khurana said, but the new findings may give the drugs an edge when doctors and patients are choosing a drug to lower cholesterol. "People, including myself, who are taking statins might have a lower risk of some cancers, be they colon, prostate, or whatever," said the University of Colorado's Bunn. But, using statins primarily for cancer prevention will have to wait until more evidence is in, he added. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...id=968332188492 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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