Can Statin Use Increase Lung Cancer Survival?

A recent study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention examined how statin use could improve lung cancer outcomes.

For the study, reserachers looked at data on over 14,000 patients who had been newly diagnosed with lung cancer between 1998 and 2009 as part of the English cancer registry. They discovered that lung cancer patients who used statins within just a year of their diagnosis had a reduced risk of death from the health issue.

Furthermore, among patients who survived in the first six months following their diagnosis, those that used statins showed a statistically nonsignificant 11 percent reduction in death after cancer. In patients who used at least 12 prescriptions of statins or lipophilic statins such as simvastatin there proved to be a statistically significant 19 percent reduction in lung cancer deaths.

In all patients who used statins in the year leading up to a lung cancer diagnosis there was a statistically significant 12 percent reduction in lung cancer deaths. There was no difference between on-small cell lung cancer patients and small cell lung cancer patients in this study.

"This finding is worthy of further investigation in observational studies. If replicated in further observational studies, this would provide evidence in favor of conducting a randomized, controlled trial of simvastatin in lung cancer patients. We hope to conduct a similar analysis in a large cohort of lung cancer patients from Northern Ireland," concluded Chris Cardwell, a senior lecturer in medical statistics at the Centre for Public Health at Queen's University Belfast.