The statins class of drugs has the well-known effect of inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase and cholesterol synthesis, and is therefore used widely for treatment of hypercholesterolaemia. Statins also inhibit the formation of isoprenoids, which are necessary for posttranscriptional modifications of signaling proteins.

Despite little epidemiological evidence of statin effects, studies has shown that statins decrease the risk of lymphatic and haematopoietic cancers by 12%, although this was not significant, said Joan Fortuny, MD, principal investigator and pharmaco-epidemiologist, Municipal Institute of Medical Research, and Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain, who presented the findings of the Epilymph European study.

There is also evidence that statins decrease the risk of several other cancers, such as those of the pancreas, colon and oesophagus, Dr. Fortuny said during her presentation here on June 8^th.

To evaluate the relationship between statin use and lymphoma risk, Dr. Fortuny and colleagues conducted a study of 2362 consecutive patients diagnosed with B and T lymphoma who were matched to 2469 controls (hospital 1422; population 1047) in 5 European countries between 1998 and 2003. Subjects were matched for sex, age, and recruitment area.

All patients and controls completed an extensive questionnaire with a blinded interviewer. The questionnaire related to subjects' sociodemographic variables, medical history, and drug use. Using manual analysis of the full dataset the researchers divided the reported drugs used by class.

The sample population was divided into "never-users" of statins (2275 patients; 2053 controls) and "statin users" (79 patients; 112 controls) and adjusted for age, sex, country, use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) and aspirin, smoking status, and educational background.

Results show that overall risk of lymphoma was significantly lower among the statin users (odds ratio [OR], 0.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.4-0.8).

When data were analysed according to duration of statin use, there was no significant difference in the benefits of the shorter durations of use. Data on statin users were also analysed for potential statin benefit across lymphoma subtypes, including B-cell lymphomas. Dr. Fortuny said that while some of the numbers are small, "The risk benefits all gave odds ratios between 0.5 and 0.8, so we did not find any stratification between lymphoma subtypes."

He indicated that this study provides observational data that contains no dose information, and that they could not at this stage rule out hypercholesterolaemia itself as a risk factor for lymphoma or that the statins are markers of a genetic trait that is at risk of lymphoma.

However, he stressed that the study's strength outweighed its limitations, with a large population size, consistency of results across the countries and types of controls, and similar epidemiological data that is associated with statin use across a number of other tumour types.


[Study title: Statin Use And Risk Of Lymphoma. An International Case-Control Study. Abstract 004]

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