HEALTHY DIETS AND SCIENCE: Statins associated with elevated risk of high-grade prostate cancer

The raison d'etre of this website is to provide you with hard scientific information which may help you make informed decisions in your quest for health (so far I have blogged concise summaries of over 1,500 scientific studies and have had three books published).

My research is mainly focused on the effects of cholesterol, saturated fat and statin drugs on health. If you know anyone who is worried about their cholesterol levels and heart disease, or has been told to take statin drugs you could send them a link to this website, and to my statin or cholesterol or heart disease books.

David Evans

Independent Health Researcher

Sunday 15 March 2015

Statins associated with elevated risk of high-grade prostate cancer

2015 Feb 23. pii: S0959-8049(15)00124-0

Study title and authors:

The risk of prostate cancer for men on aspirin, statin or antidiabetic medications.

Nordström T, Clements M, Karlsson R, Adolfsson J, Grönberg H.

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25727881

This study estimated the association between prescribed medications and the risk of either any prostate cancer or high-grade prostate cancer. The study included 185,667 men having a first recorded prostate specific antigen test and 18,574 men having a first prostate biopsy.

Regarding statins, the study found:
(a) Men using statins had a 16% increased risk of any prostate cancer compared to men not taking statins.
(b) Men using statins had a 25% increased risk of high-grade prostate cancer compared to men not taking statins.

Nordstrom concluded: "Use of any statins was associated with an elevated risk of being diagnosed with high-grade prostate cancer".