Dr. Weeks Comment: Again – more urging by big pHARMa to use statins for many non-cholesterol issues = this time cancer.

Again, we have an article published with a very perilous conclusion. This article below describes an association between statins and improved outcome from cancer. But they don’t say WHY that association exists. So let’s examine this study. Do statins help people with cancer? YES. But the reason they do has NOTHING to do with killing cancer TUMOR cells. They help people with cancer challenges for one reason: statins are weak anti-inflammatory agents. That is a good thing.

As my reader know, all cancer spreads by inflammation. read THIS and my summary HERE

But what the article does NOT reveal are two important things:

1) the negative effects of statin drugs is far greater than its anti-inflammatory benefits, (including dementia, muscle pain fatigue etc.

and 2) there are many more powerful anti-inflammatory agents which have NO negative side-effects.

Therefore: don’t give toxic statins to cancer patients because the negative are far greater than the positives and there are many more beneficial anti-inflammatory agents available aside from statins.

Statin use after diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma and patient survival: findings from a retrospective cohort study

Aaron P. Thrift, PhD Yamini Natarajan, MD

Abstract

Background & Aims

Statin use is associated with lower risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, it is unclear whether post-diagnosis statin use is associated with reduced risk of mortality in HCC patients.

Methods

We used data from 15,422 patients with HCC in the VA Central Cancer Registry diagnosed between 2002 and 2016. We identified statin prescriptions that were filled before and after cancer diagnosis, and used time-dependent Cox regression models to calculate adjusted hazard ratios (HR) and 95% CIs for mortality risk. We used a time-varying exposure to avoid immortal-time bias, and a 3 month lag (following patients from 3 months after cancer diagnosis) to reduce reverse causation. A sensitivity analysis was conducted varying the lag duration between date of cancer diagnosis and start of follow-up.

Results

Statin use after diagnosis was recorded in 14.9% of HCC patients. We found that post-diagnosis statin use was associated with a decreased risk of cancer specific (adjusted HR, 0.85; 95% CI, 0.77-0.93) and all-cause mortality (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.83-0.95). The magnitudes of these inverse associations were consistent for HCC patients using both low- and high-dose statins, and the inverse associations remained across a range of lag periods (from 0 months to 12 months after HCC diagnosis). We found no evidence for effect modification by pre-diagnosis statin use, or by presentation or treatment-related factors, and no independent association with pre-diagnosis statin use.

Conclusion

Post-diagnosis statin use was associated with reduced mortality in HCC patients.

More disinformation re Statins and Cancer