PURPOSE: Prospective cohort studies support that statin drug users have a lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer.
Whether statin drug use influences risk of screen-detected disease is less clear, possibly because of complex detection biases. Thus, we investigated this association in a setting in which men had low baseline serum PSA concentration and were screened annually.
METHODS: We conducted a cohort study of 9,457 men aged ≥55 years old at randomization to the placebo arm of the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial. The men reported new use of medications quarterly. We estimated the multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of prostate cancer (N=574 in 62,192 person-years) for use of a statin drug and duration of use during the trial using Cox proportional hazards regression.
RESULTS: Over seven years of follow up, use of a statin drug during the trial was not associated with risk of total (HR=1.03, 95% CI 0.82-1.30), lower- (HR=0.96, 95% CI 0.71-1.29), or higher-grade (HR=1.27, 95% CI 0.85-1.90) prostate cancer. Duration of use during follow-up also was not associated with risk of total (P-trend=0.7), lower- (P-trend=0.5), or higher- (P-trend=0.2) grade disease.
CONCLUSION: These prospective results do not support the hypothesis that statin drugs protect against prostate cancer in the setting of regular prostate cancer screening.
Written by:
Platz EA, Tangen CM, Goodman PJ, Till C, Parnes HL, Figg WD, Albanes D, Neuhouser ML, Klein EA, Lucia MS, Thompson IM Jr, Kristal AR. Are you the author?
Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute and the Department of Urology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland; SWOG Statistical Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington; Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland; Medical Oncology Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland; Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland; 6Cancer Prevention Program, Division of Public Health Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington; Center for Clinical & Translational Research, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio; University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado; Department of Urology, University of Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas.
Reference: J Urol. 2014 Feb 8. pii: S0022-5347(14)00195-5.
doi: 10.1016/j.juro.2014.01.095
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 24518774
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