Statin use and fatal prostate cancer
Cancer, 04/27/2012

Marcella SW et al. – Statin use was associated with substantial protection against prostate cancer death, adding to the epidemiologic evidence for an inhibitory effect on prostate cancer.

• This was a matched case-control study.
• Cases were residents of New Jersey ages 55 to 79years who died from prostate cancer between 1997 and 2000.
• The cases were matched individually to population-based controls by 5-year age group and race.
• Medication data were obtained identically for cases and controls from blinded medical chart review.
• Conditional logistic regression was used to adjust for confounders.

• In total, 718 cases were identified, and cooperation was obtained from 77% of their spouses (N=553).
• After a review of medical records, 387 men were eligible, and 380 were matched to a control.
• The unadjusted odds ratio was 0.49 (95% confidence interval, 0.34-0.70) and decreased to 0.37 (P<.0001) after adjusting for education, waist size, body mass index, comorbidities, and antihypertensive medication.
• There was little difference between lipophilic and hydrophilic statins, but more risk reduction was noted for high-potency statins (73%; P<.0001) compared with low-potency statins (31%; P=.32).