Statin use and mortality among ovarian cancer patients: A population‐based cohort study

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Statin use has been suggested to improve prognosis in cancer patients, however, for ovarian cancer, the evidence is sparse. From the Danish Cancer Registry, we identified patients aged 30–84 years with a histologically verified first diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer between 2000 and 2013. Data on filled prescriptions, death, and potential confounding factors were obtained from nationwide registers. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between post‐diagnostic statin use and all‐cause or ovarian cancer‐specific mortality. Among 4,419 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, post‐diagnostic statin use was not statistically significantly associated with all‐cause (HR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.78–1.04) or ovarian cancer‐specific mortality (HR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.76–1.08). There was little evidence of a dose‐response relationship and the neutral associations persisted in sensitivity analyses. In women with endometrioid or clear cell tumour histology, cancer‐specific mortality was reduced by 30–40% among statin users compared to non‐users, however the analyses were limited by small numbers. Significantly reduced mortality with statin use was observed in subcohorts of new users of statins and of patients not using low‐dose aspirin. In conclusion, we found no strong evidence of an association between post‐diagnostic statin use and reduced mortality in ovarian cancer patients. However, our finding of potential differential susceptibility to statins among patients with different histologic types of ovarian cancer warrants further evaluation.
What's new?
Statins don't boost overall survival in ovarian cancer patients, according to new results. Looking at previous evidence that statins spur apoptosis in cultured cells, these authors investigated whether statins, used after an ovarian cancer diagnosis, could impact ovarian cancer mortality. They looked at data from over 4,400 patients in the Danish Cancer Registry. Although they found no association between statin use and mortality among the whole group, they did note improved survival among patients with certain tumor types. Though the sample size in these subgroups was too small to draw a strong conclusion, it's an intriguing result, worthy of further study.