Statins lower advanced prostate cancer risk

Cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins may slash a man's risk of advanced Prostate cancer, according to research presented Monday.

A study that followed more than 34,000 men over 10 years found that men who used statins had half the risk of advanced Prostate cancer and one-third the risk of fatal prostate cancer, compared with men who did not use the drugs.

Statins - which include Pfizer Inc.'s $10 billion-a-year Lipitor, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Pravachol and Merck and Co. Inc.'s Zocor - interfere with an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase that enables the liver to produce cholesterol.

The longer the drugs were taken, the more the cancer risk dropped, according to research from Johns Hopkins University, the National Cancer Institute and Harvard University.

Statins are the world's best-selling drugs, taken by millions to reduce the risk of Heart attack by lowering cholesterol levels.

"This means we will have a little bit less trouble convincing men to stay on their drugs," said Dr. Howard Weintraub, co-director of New York University School of Medicine's lipid treatment and research center.

"Reducing the incidence of prostate cancer while at the same time encouraging cardiovascular health is a win-win situation," said Weintraub, who was not involved in the study.

The research did not find, however, that use of statins had any influence on cancer that had not spread beyond the prostate.

The researchers, who presented the results at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Anaheim, California, stressed that more work is needed to confirm the study, which was conducted through questionnaires.

"If the conclusions continue to hold up over time, there is a great translational potential for preventing invasive and metastatic prostate cancer," lead investigator Dr. Elizabeth Platz said in a statement.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States, with more than 230,000 new cases expected this year. It is the second leading cause of death due to cancer, after lung cancer.

The researchers said they do not know whether the apparent benefit of statins is due to their cholesterol-lowering effect or other properties, such as anti-inflammatory activity or effects on proteins.

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