Statins Could Cut Lung Cancer Risk

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In recent years, many studies have explored a possible connection between statins and reduced cancer risk, based on the theory that statins may inhibit the onset and growth of malignancy at the molecular level. However, studies on skin, colorectal, and, more recently, lung cancer risk have so far proven inconclusive.

Exploring further, a team led by Dr. Vikas Khurana, of the department of medicine at Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in Shreveport, La., pored over six years of data amassed by the VA Health Care System (VAHCS). The information concerned almost 484,000 patients between the ages of 18 and 100 from eight southern states.

Almost 98 percent of the patients were men, all of who had sought treatment either at the VAHCS primary care clinic or hospital between 1998 and 2004.

About 1.5 percent of the patients had lung cancer, of whom nearly three-quarters were smokers. Just over a quarter of the cancer patients had been taking statins prior to their diagnosis.

Irrespective of race, body mass index, diabetes status, age, or smoking and drinking histories, statin use exceeding six months was linked to a significant lung cancer risk reduction of 55 percent, the researchers found.

This protective effect rose along with the length of time statins were used. Those patients who took a statin for four years or more had a 77 percent reduction in lung cancer risk, the team noted.

However, statin use of less than six months was associated with an increased risk for developing lung cancer.

But Khurana and his colleagues dismissed the notion that statin use actually caused this bump in risk. Instead, they attributed the finding to pre-existing conditions that went unnoticed or misstated in the early stages of study participation.

While encouraging, the new findings need to be replicated among a more diverse group of patients, including more women and non-veterans, the researchers said.

"We have very strong data based on actual patient chart review, not simply patient recall," noted Khurana, who is currently an associate professor of medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. "But there have been conflicting reports about statins being protective or not, and we were surprised by the high percentage of protection we saw. So we will need to look at this some more to see if other factors correlated with stain use is related to the cancer protection we found."