Abstract 136: Statins and breast cancer mortality.

Abstract

Abstract Background: Breast cancer is a common malignancy and cause of cancer death. Recent studies have suggested that statins, an established drug group in the prevention of cardiovascular mortality, could have beneficial effects against recurrence and progression of breast cancer. We evaluated breast cancer-specific and overall mortality among statin users in a cohort of breast cancer patients. Methods: Our study cohort included all newly diagnosed breast cancer patients in Finland during 1995-2003 (31,236 cases), identified from the Finnish Cancer Registry. Information on statin use during these years was obtained from a national prescription database. We used Cox proportional hazards regression method to estimate mortality among statin users separately for pre- and post-diagnostic usage. Results: A total of 4,169 participants had ever-used statins. During the median follow-up of 3.25 years (range 0.08-9.0 years), a total of 6,011 participants died, of which 3,619 (60.2%) was due to breast cancer. Post-diagnostic statin use was inversely associated with breast cancer mortality (participants with localized tumors: HR 0.33, 95% CI 0.24-0.42; metastatic tumors: HR 0.52, 95% CI 0.31-0.86) and also overall mortality. The association between statin use and mortality was dose-dependent. In stratified analyses, the reduction did not significantly vary by lipophilicity of statins. Additionally, long-term pre-diagnostic statin use was also associated with lower breast cancer mortality. Conclusion: Lower breast cancer mortality observed for both pre-diagnostic and post-diagnostic statin use suggests that statins could lower risk of death in breast cancer patients. A clinical trial testing statins’ effect on survival in breast cancer patients is feasible. Citation Format: Teemu J. Murtola, Kala Visvanathan, Miia Artama, Harri Vainio, Eero Pukkala. Statins and breast cancer mortality. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 136. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-136