Statins usage after prostatectomy lowers cancer recurrence: Study

Men who use statins to lower their cholesterol are 30% less likely to see their prostate cancer come back after surgery, as compared to men who do not use the drugs, according to researchers.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Centre also found that higher doses of the drugs were associated with lower risk of recurrence.

Researchers examined the records of 1319 men who underwent radical prostatectomy, 18% of whom were taking statins at the time of surgery.

The results showed that overall, statin use reduced the risk of recurrence by 30%. And the dosage was directly proportional to the amount of risk reduced.

Statin users also tended to be white, older and heavier than non-users. They had lower clinical stages at diagnosis, but higher Gleason scores, a measure of tumour aggressiveness.

However, scientists caution that there's still a lot unknown to them and further studies are in the offing.

"For example, we don't know the diet, exercise or smoking habits of these men. So it's not entirely clear if the lower risk we detected is related to the statins alone - it could be due to other factors we were not able to measure," says Robert Hamilton, MD, a urologist at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the study.

The findings are published in the journal Cancer.