According to a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Meeting, women who use statins to lower their blood cholesterol have a reduced risk of death from ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer, while rare, has a five-year survival rate of less than 50 percent.
The disease produces only vague symptoms and is often diagnosed at a stage when the cancer has spread.
The new study featured 10,062 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer between 1995 and 2015.
Among the study participants, 2,621 used statins.
Researchers looked at the different types of statins the women used as well as the various subtypes of ovarian cancer.
Most of the women who used statins — 80 percent — used lipophilic statins, which are a type of statin that penetrates into the body more thoroughly, including the brain. This class of drugs includes Zocor (simvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin), and Lipitor (atorvastatin).
The women in the study who used lipophilic statins had a 43 percent reduction in ovarian cancer deaths. The most dramatic reductions were seen in women with high-grade, serious cancers (a 40 percent reduced risk of death) and endometrioid ovarian cancer (a 50 percent reduction in death).
“These reductions were observed across all stages, treatments and epithelial ovarian cancer subtypes at varying magnitude,” said Kala Visvanathan, MD, professor of epidemiology and oncology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore.
The study showed that even women who started lipophilic statin use after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer experienced a reduce risk of death.
There are several biological mechanisms that could explain why statins might alter ovarian cancer outcomes, said Dr. Visvanathan. One possible mechanism has to do with an enzyme called hydroxymethylglutarate coenzyme-A reductase (HMG-CoA).
Statins help block the enzyme to lower bad cholesterol. The enzyme may also influence ovarian cancer growth, she said.
“It’s not likely one specific mechanism,” Visvanathan said. “Multiple aspects are probably contributing to what we’re seeing. Our results support further evaluation of lipophilic statins in women with epithelial ovarian cancer in a randomized clinical trial in conjunction with existing therapies.”
Statins are inexpensive and well-tolerated. If further studies show statins could lower ovarian cancer deaths, “it would be a great outcome,” noted Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, president and annual meeting program chair of the AACR.
Hispanics who live near the U.S.-Mexico border are less likely to survive blood cancers compared to Hispanic patients who live in other parts of Texas and non-Hispanic white patients, according to a study presented at the conference.
Researchers looked at data from the Texas Cancer Registry to analyze more than 62,000 cases of blood cancers diagnosed in Texas between 1995 and 2016.
Survival rates for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), were significantly lower for Hispanics who lived in El Paso compared with elsewhere in Texas.
“Hispanic individuals living at the border tend to be poorer, are more likely to lack health insurance, and many could be undocumented,” said the lead author of the study, Alfonso Bencomo-Alvarez, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso. But, he added, “We are also looking at whether some biological factors can contribute to these disparities.”
The study illuminates the importance of genetic testing and follow-up in patients who are diagnosed with cancers that typically occur in older adults at a young age.
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