HIGH BLOOD CHOLESTEROL MAY BE GREATER RISK OF GETTING BREAST CANCER WITH STATINS
An association between high blood cholesterol and breast cancer has been
found in a study of more than 1 million patients over a 14 year time period in
the UK. The research will be presented today at Frontiers in CardioVascular
Biology (FCVB) 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting is organised by the
Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science of the European Society of Cardiology
(ESC) in collaboration with 13 European cardiovascular science societies.
Dr. Rahul Potluri,
founder of the ACALM Study Unit and lead author, said: "Our preliminary
study suggests that women with high cholesterol in their blood may be at
greater risk of getting breast cancer. It raises the possibility of preventing
breast cancer with statins, which lower cholesterol, but as this is a primitive
study, significant time and research is needed before this idea can be
tested."
Over the past few
years, population studies have suggested an association between obesity and
breast cancer. Last year a study in mice concluded that lowering circulating
cholesterol or interfering with its metabolism may be used to prevent or treat
breast cancer.1
Dr Potluri said:
"We have a general principle that obesity is linked to breast cancer and a
study in mice suggested that this may be because of cholesterol. We decided to
investigate whether there was any association between hyperlipidaemia, which is
high cholesterol essentially, and breast cancer."
The researchers
conducted a retrospective analysis of more than 1 million patients across the
UK between 2000 and 2013 from the Algorithm for Comorbidities, Associations,
Length of stay and Mortality (ACALM) clinical database. There were 664,159
women and of these, 22 938 had hyperlipidaemia and 9 312 had breast cancer.
Some 530 women with hyperlipidaemia developed breast cancer.
The researchers used a
statistical model to study the association between hyperlipidaemia and breast
cancer. They found that having hyperlipidaemia increased the risk of breast
cancer by 1.64 times (95% confidence interval 1.50-1.79).
Dr Potluri said:
"We found that women with high cholesterol had a significantly greater
chance of developing breast cancer. This was an observational study so we can't
conclude that high cholesterol causes breast cancer but the strength of this
association warrants further investigation."
He added: "A
prospective study that monitors the risk of breast cancer in women with and
without high cholesterol is needed to confirm what we observed. If the
connection between high cholesterol and breast cancer is validated, the next
step would be to see if lowering cholesterol with statins can reduce the risk
of developing cancer."
Dr Potluri continued:
"Statins are cheap, widely available and relatively safe. We are
potentially heading towards a clinical trial in 10-15 years to test the effect
of statins on the incidence of breast cancer. If such a trial is successful,
statins may have a role in the prevention of breast cancer especially in high
risk groups, such as women with high cholesterol."
He concluded:
"While our study was preliminary, our results are promising. We found a
significant association between having high cholesterol and developing breast
cancer that needs to be explored in more depth. Caution is needed when
interpreting our results because while we had a large study population, our
analysis was retrospective and observational with inherent limitations. That
said, the findings are exciting and further research in this field may have a
big impact on patients several years down the line.'
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