Statins May Cut Colon Cancer Risk
People taking statin drugs to stem the progression of heart disease may be getting an extra benefit: protection from colorectal cancer, according to new research.
The findings in today’s New England Journal of Medicine showed that taking cholesterol-lowering medicine cut the risk of colon cancer by 47%.
But in an editorial in the Journal, Drs. Ernest T. Hawk and Jaye L. Viner of the National Cancer Institute said that without further research, “it is too early to recommend statins as chemopreventive agents against colorectal cancer” outside of a research setting.
The time window to do that research is closing, they warned. As statins are prescribed for more and more people with high cholesterol levels, the ability to do tests where volunteers get a placebo instead of the drug “may soon disappear.”
The latest results updated findings released in June of last year showing a 51% reduction in the colorectal cancer risk among people in northern Israel who had been taking statins, the most widely prescribed class of medicines in the United States, with annual sales of $12.5 billion.
The research team, led by Jenny Poynter of the University of Michigan, estimated that 4,814 people would have to take statins regularly to prevent one case of colorectal cancer.
“In a high-risk population, such as those with a family history of colorectal cancer, approximately half as many would need to be treated in order to prevent one case,” they said.
