Association found between high cholesterol and breast cancer

An association between high blood cholesterol and breast cancer has been found in a study of more than 1 million patients over a 14 year time period in the UK. The research will be presented today at Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting is organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in collaboration with 13 European cardiovascular science societies.

Dr Rahul Potluri, founder of the ACALM Study Unit and lead author, said: “Our preliminary study suggests that women with High cholesterol in their blood may be at greater risk of getting breast cancer. It raises the possibility of preventing breast cancer with statins, which lower cholesterol, but as this is a primitive study, significant time and research is needed before this idea can be tested.”

Over the past few years, population studies have suggested an association between obesity and breast cancer. Last year a study in mice concluded that lowering circulating cholesterol or interfering with its metabolism may be used to prevent or treat breast cancer.

Dr Potluri said: “We have a general principle that obesity is linked to breast cancer and a study in mice suggested that this may be because of cholesterol. We decided to investigate whether there was any association between hyperlipidaemia, which is High cholesterol essentially, and breast cancer.”

The researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of more than 1 million patients across the UK between 2000 and 2013 from the Algorithm for Comorbidities, Associations, Length of stay and Mortality (ACALM) clinical database. There were 664,159 women and of these, 22 938 had hyperlipidaemia and 9 312 had breast cancer. Some 530 women with hyperlipidaemia developed breast cancer.

The researchers used a statistical model to study the association between hyperlipidaemia and breast cancer. They found that having hyperlipidaemia increased the risk of breast cancer by 1.64 times (95% confidence interval 1.50-1.79).

High cholesterol levels may increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, a large new British study reports.

The findings suggest that keeping tight control over cholesterol through medication could help prevent breast cancer, said lead author Rahul Potluri, a researcher at the Aston University School of Medical Sciences in Birmingham, England.

“This is a preliminary study and further research is required before anything can be confirmed,” Potluri said. “However, 10 to 15 years down the line, if further prospective studies confirm these findings, there is the possibility for a clinical trial of the use of statins in breast cancer.” Statins are prescription drugs used to treat High cholesterol.

Researchers reviewed the medical records of over 660,000 female patients in Birmingham and Manchester between 2000 and 2013, using a statistical model to study the association between High cholesterol and breast cancer.

The investigators determined that High cholesterol increases a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer by 64 percent.

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By Dennis Thompson - HealthDay

Association found between <a class=High cholesterol and breaSt cancer" align="right" /> Dr Potluri said: “We found that women with High cholesterol had a significantly greater chance of developing breast cancer. This was an observational study so we can’t conclude that High cholesterol causes breast cancer but the strength of this association warrants further investigation.”

He added: “A prospective study that monitors the risk of breast cancer in women with and without High cholesterol is needed to confirm what we observed. If the connection between High cholesterol and breast cancer is validated, the next step would be to see if lowering cholesterol with statins can reduce the risk of developing cancer.”

Dr Potluri continued: “Statins are cheap, widely available and relatively safe. We are potentially heading towards a clinical trial in 10-15 years to test the effect of statins on the incidence of breast cancer. If such a trial is successful, statins may have a role in the prevention of breast cancer especially in high risk groups, such as women with High cholesterol.”

According to a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that a common byproduct of cholesterol may foster the growth and spread of cancer cells.  They also argued that taking cholesterol-lowering medications such as statins could actually prevent the spread of deadly diseases like breast cancer.

Previous studies have found that being overweight or obese can increase the body’s production of hormones - such as estrogen - known to fuel the spread of some cancers. The team at Duke found that the body breaks down High cholesterol into the molecule 27HC, which mimics the effects of estrogen in some tissues.

The researchers analyzed a group of mice on high fat diets and found that their levels of 27HC increased substantially, leading to tumors 30 percent larger than those in mice eating a normal diet.  According to BBC News, the tumors were also more likely to spread and grow more quickly when they were injected with 27HC.

Given their findings, the research team concluded that taking statins or switching to a healthier diet may help prevent the spread of breast cancer.

“What we have now found is a molecule - not cholesterol itself, but an abundant metabolite of cholesterol - called 27HC that mimics the hormone estrogen and can independently drive the growth of breast cancer,” said one of the researchers Donald McDonnell.

He concluded: “While our study was preliminary, our results are promising. We found a significant association between having High cholesterol and developing breast cancer that needs to be explored in more depth. Caution is needed when interpreting our results because while we had a large study population, our analysis was retrospective and observational with inherent limitations. That said, the findings are exciting and further research in this field may have a big impact on patients several years down the line.’

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Reference

1Nelson ER, Wardell SE, Jasper JS, Park S, Suchindran S, Howe MK, Carver NJ, Pillai RV, Sullivan PM, Sondhi V, Umetani M, Geradts J, McDonnell DP. 27-Hydroxycholesterol links hypercholesterolemia and breast cancer pathophysiology. Science. 2013 Nov 29;342(6162):1094-8. doi:10.1126/science.1241908.

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About FCVB

Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) is a comprehensive basic science conference organised every two years by the ESC Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science, whose mission is to enhance the importance of basic science to clinical cardiology. FCVB 2014 was organised in collaboration with 13 European cardiovascular science societies.

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