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.