Could Statin Use During ADT Delay Progression of Prostate Cancer?

Men using cholesterol-lowering statins experienced a decreased in prostate cancer progression while undergoing androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), according to a recent study.

In the past, researchers have established a potential association between improved outcomes for prostate cancer and statin use, but due to limited data, researchers had not determined how this association is impacted when statins are combined with androgen deprivation therapy.
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For the study, researchers evaluated statin use in 926 patients who used ADT to treat prostate cancer between 1996 and 2013, in order to determine if statins would delay resistance to ADT.

Overall, 31% of the participants were taking statins when they began ADT and after 6 years of follow-up, 70% of patients experienced disease progression.

After researchers compared the median time to disease progression (TTP) of patients taking statins to patients who did not take statins, they found that the TTP among statin users was longer than those not using statins (27.5 months vs. 17.4 months).

“Even when controlled for known prognostic factors, men taking statins had significantly longer TTP while receiving ADT than nonusers,” the researchers concluded.

“The widespread use of statins and their established safety profile make them attractive potential anticancer therapeutics as adjuvants to cytotoxic or androgen-ablating therapies. Ultimately, these results require prospective validation.”

The complete study is published in the May issue of JAMA Oncology.

-Michelle Canales Butcher

Reference:

Harshman LC, Wang X, Nakabayashi M, et al. Statin use at the time of initiation of androgen deprivation therapy and time to progression in patients with hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. JAMA Oncol. 2015 May [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.0829.