Mortality modestly lower for statin users in observational study..

Sustained statin use was associated with modestly better survival in lung cancer, an observational study in Great Britain showed.

People already on statins before diagnosis had a hazard ratio of 0.88 for lung cancer–specific mortality compared with other lung cancer patients after adjustment for various factors (P<0.001), Chris Cardwell, PhD, of Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Ireland, and colleagues found.

That association was stronger after 12 prescriptions (adjusted HR 0.81, P=0.03) and when limited to lipophilic statins (adjusted HR 0.81, P=0.01), particularly simvastatin (Zocor), although attenuated in some sensitivity analyses.

Although these “associations could be causal or could reflect residual confounding or other biases,” the researchers pointed out “preclinical evidence for anticancer properties of statins from lung cancer cell lines and mouse models.”

Observational studies have also linked statins to better cancer-specific mortality in breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers.

“These results require confirmation in further large epidemiologic studies, particularly those with complete stage data, which could inform the decision to conduct a trial of simvastatin in lung cancer patients,” Cardwell’s group concluded.

Their study included 3,638 newly-diagnosed lung cancer patients in the English cancer registry from 1998 to 2009, linked to prescription records in the U.K. Clinical Practice Research Datalink and national mortality data up to 2012.