Effect of statins use on risk and prognosis of breast cancer: a meta-analysis

Abstract

The findings regarding the association between statins use and breast cancer are inconsistent. Given the widely and long-term use of statins as first choice drug for dyslipidemia, we conducted this meta-analysis for better understanding the associations between statins use and the risk and prognosis of breast cancer. Articles regarding effect of statins use on risk, prognosis of breast cancer and published before January 2021 were searched in the following databases: Web of Science, PubMed, EMBASE, Medline and Google Scholar. Odds ratios (ORs)/ relative risks (RRs) or hazard ratios (HRs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were computed to generate a pooled effect size and 95% CI. The meta-analysis showed no significant association between statins use and risk of breast cancer (OR/RR = 1.02; 95% CI, 0.97-1.08; I 2 = 76.1%; P < 0.001). The meta-analysis showed that statins use was associated with lower breast cancer recurrence, all-cause mortality and disease-specific mortality (breast cancer recurrence: HR = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.67-0.84; I 2 = 31.7%; P = 0.154; all-cause mortality: HR = 0.82; 95% CI, 0.77-0.89; I 2 = 67.5%; P < 0.001; and disease-specific mortality: HR = 0.82; 95% CI, 0.72-0.93; I 2 = 83.6%; P < 0.001). Overall, in this report we demonstrated that the use of statins can improve the prognosis of breast cancer patients including lower risks of breast cancer recurrence, all-cause and cancer-specific mortality, though statins therapy may not have an impact on reducing the risk of breast cancer. Anti-Cancer Drugs 33: e507-e518

Screening of GPCR drugs for repurposing in breast cancer

“…Patients were categorized into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive cohorts based on the type of β-blocker they used. Covariates like age, sex, race, ethnicity, BC as the first cancer, stage of BC, subtype of BC, use of statins due to their effects on BC mortality ( Lv et al, 2020 ; Hosio et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2022 ; Zhao et al, 2022 ), Charlson comorbidity index, and the year of BC diagnosis were measured. The all-cause mortality and BC mortality were the outcomes for this study, and patients were followed from incident BC diagnosis until the earliest of all-cause mortality, discontinuation of the index β-blocker, switching or concomitant use of comparator β-blockers, or the end of the study period (31 December 2015).…”

Metabolic switching of estrogen‐related receptor alpha in breast cancer aggression

“…Recent reports to identify ERRα ligands using the Library of Pharmacologically Active Compounds (LOPAC) and Tox21 compound library have shown several statins as agonists for ERRα or ERRα/PGC1α complex [3]. It is noteworthy though that finding cholesterol as a potent ERRα activator in breast cancer aggression supports statin's anti‐cancer actions found in several clinical studies [14,15]. Thus, paradoxically, the statins were shown to be beneficial in breast cancer prevention [14,15], although these were screened as ERRα agonists.…”

Cholesterol and Its Derivatives: Multifaceted Players in Breast Cancer Progression

“…Despite some studies suggesting no close association between statin use and BC risk (184,185), recent evidence showed a link between statin use and reduced recurrence and disease-specific mortality in BC patients, with an improved BC prognosis and survival (186)(187)(188).…”