Cholesterol Drugs: Cancer Fighters?

April 26, 2004 -- Cholesterol-lowering drugs do not raise a woman's cancer risk -- and may actually lower her risk of breast cancer.

It's too soon to say that the drugs -- Crestor, Lescol, Lipitor, Pravachol, and Zocor -- actually have an anti-cancer effect. More research is needed. But in a National Cancer Institute-funded study, taking statins appeared to decrease the risk of breast cancer by 30% in postmenopausal women.

Denise Boudreau, PhD, a research associate at Seattle's Group Health Cooperative, and colleagues report the findings in the April 26 online edition of Cancer. Boudreau led the study while at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

"Thirty percent is a fairly large reduction in breast cancer risk," Boudreau tells WebMD. "To date, the laboratory studies are encouraging and support our findings. They find that statins, through a variety of mechanisms, may decrease cancer risk, including breast cancer. Obviously, more work needs to be done, but all recent work indicates they are protective against cancer."

No Extra Breast Cancer in Older Women on Statins

Boudreau and colleagues undertook the study because an earlier study suggested that statins might actually increase cancer risk. That clinical trial, designed to test statins for efficacy and safety, found 12 breast cancers in women who took Pravachol but only one case in women who got a placebo.

Boudreau now thinks that finding was a statistical fluke. And it never caused much concern among doctors, says Herman Kattlove, MD, of the American Cancer Society.

"There is not a lot of concern about statins," Kattlove tells WebMD. "Even if they did slightly increase the risk of breast cancer, their benefits are so great that, medically speaking, I don't think one would worry about cancer when prescribing them."

Boudreau and colleagues enrolled nearly 1,000 women, aged 65-79, diagnosed with breast cancer between 1997 and 1999. They matched these women with about 1,000 similar women from the same area of western Washington. About 12% of each group used statins for more than six months.

Statin use didn't increase breast cancer risk in these women. But women who used statins for more than five years had 30% fewer breast cancers than those who never used the drugs.

There was no difference in breast cancer risk between the five different brands of statins.

"We are seeing dramatic increases in statin use," Boudreau says. "It is going to continue to go in that direction. So this is really good news for all the people eligible to be taking these medications."