Abstract Title:
Long-term statin use and risk of ductal and lobular breast cancer among women 55-74 years of age.
Abstract Source:
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2013 Jul 5. Epub 2013 Jul 5. PMID: 23833125
Background: Mechanistic studies largely support the chemopreventive potential of statins. However, results of epidemiologic studies investigating statin use and breast cancer risk have been inconsistent and lacked the ability to evaluate long-term statin use. Methods: We utilized data from a population-based case-control study of breast cancer conducted in the Seattle-Puget Sound region to investigate the relationship between long-term statin use and breast cancer risk. 916 invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and 1,068 invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) cases 55-74 years of age diagnosed between 2000 and 2008 were compared to 902 control women. All participants were interviewed in-person and data on hypercholesterolemia and all episodes of lipid lowering medication use were collected through a structured questionnaire. We assessed the relationship between statin use and IDC and ILC risk using polytomous logistic regression. Results: Current users of statins for 10 years or longer had a 1.83-fold increased risk of IDC [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.14-2.93] and a 1.97-fold increased risk of ILC (95% CI: 1.25-3.12) compared to never users of statins. Among women diagnosed with hypercholesterolemia, current users of statins for 10 years or longer had more than double the risk of both IDC [odds ratio (OR): 2.04, 95% CI: 1.17-3.57] and ILC (OR: 2.43, 95% CI: 1.40-4.21) compared to never users. Conclusion: In this contemporary population-based case-control study long-term use of statins was associated with increased risks of both IDC and ILC. Impact: Additional studies with similarly high frequencies of statin use for various durations are needed to confirm this novel finding.
2 comments:
I am sure that statins must have their uses for a minority of people in certain circumstances. its quite apparent that very little is known about the long term effects and the constant attempts to medicate the healthy population
just to save money on stroke and heart attack seems almost criminal.
Would it really save money to increase -say- breast cancer cases just to make the figures for stroke and heart attack look better? Of course such large scale study would eventually yield a great deal of information but at what cost o individuals?
At present Drs can' agree and are confused. It which case I would be better to only prescribe stains where there is some body of evidence showing that they are likely o be beneficial. I am not quite sure how much we read and here about plans to medicate everyone over a certain age is based on fact or is just media hype.
All I know is that some consensus needs to be reached fairly quickly and some properly funded and
independent {?} research is needed.
Kath
Independent research is very hard to find theses days
Sue
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