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Statins And Cancer

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Essays by Malcolm Kendrick, MD (originally published in RedFlagsDaily)

2006

Jan 11, 2006 Statins And Cancer

By Malcolm Kendrick, MD

For a few years now, studies have been concluding that statins not only protect against heart disease, they also protect against a whole host of other diseases, including — naturally — cancer.

This was always rubbish. It is far more likely that statins promote cancer than protect against it. The only reason people taking statins seemed to have lower rates of cancer is due to the following:

A: People with higher cholesterol levels have lower rates of cancer. B: People with higher cholesterol levels get put on statins. C: Ergo, people taking statins will automatically have lower rates of cancer.

It is important to note that the apparent cancer-protecting effect of statins was found in a number of uncontrolled studies. Basically, people taking statins were found to have lower rates of cancer than people not on statins. And rather than the lower rate of cancer being put down — correctly — to the fact that the people on statins were already less likely to get cancer in the first place, the authors of these studies decided, “It was the statins wot done it….” Trigger a series of headlines hailing statins as “wonder drugs.”

Did someone shout “marketing hype?” Surely not. For example, from May last year.

“The cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, used by many to protect against heart disease, may also guard against several kinds of cancers.

“Already shown to shield against prostate cancer, two new studies suggest statins also provide a greater than 50 percent reduction in risk with pancreatic and esophageal cancer, the researchers said.

"To my knowledge, statins are one of the best cancer prevention agents I have come across," said lead researcher Dr. Vikas Khurana, associate program director of the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Training Program and an assistant professor of medicine at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.” http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=47194

Now, someone has decided to look at the results from the controlled, randomized statin trials. The important word here is not necessarily “controlled.” The important word is randomized; i.e., the people taking the statins, and not taking the statins, were as similar as possible. No different starting cholesterol levels here.

And guess what they found? Cholesterol drugs don't protect against cancer

Statins do not reduce the risk of cancer, finds a review of several long-term studies published today.

The findings contradict previous studies, which suggested that the cholesterol-lowering drugs reduce cancer risk. They are based on 26 randomized controlled trials of statins and cancer incidence, or cancer death, including a total of 86,936 participants.

Dr C. Michael White and colleagues at the University of Connecticut and Hartford Hospital, Hartford, USA, report the findings in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

They write: "In the trials, statins reduced the risk of a first myocardial infarction [heart attack] and overall mortality. With long-term follow-up and collection of cancer data in a majority of studies, insight into the risk of cancer among statin-naive persons and statin users can be derived.*

"In our current meta-analysis, statins did not reduce the incidence of cancer or cancer death." JAMA. 2006; 295: 74-80.

What a surprise … not.

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies don’t care. They’ve got the message out into the public consciousness that statins protect against cancer. And they are now relying on the Datsun/Nissan effect.

As some of you might know, Nissan is a Japanese car manufacturer. For some reason, it marketed its cars in the U.S. and Europe as Datsun. Perhaps it thought that Nissan sounded too Japanese, whereas, of course, Datsun is a good old Anglo-Saxon word.

Anyhoo, the manufacturer then decided that it would call its cars Nissan, not Datsun. Some 17 years later, after spending a few billion dollars on marketing, Datsun still had three times the name recognition of Nissan in the U.S.

Which proves yet again, if proof was needed, that once you put a thought into the mind of the average human being, it becomes almost impossible to shift.

So, well done to the pharmaceutical companies. In about 20 years time, people may finally recognize that statins don’t protect against cancer. By which time it will be somewhat too bleeding late. And well done to the opinion leaders who did the studies and wrote the articles stating that statins protect against cancer. Nice work if you can get it — swimming pools all round. Pass the Cuban cigars, and swallow hard.

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