Statins and gastric cancer risk

Statin is the most promising agent in the improvement of blood lipid profiles, and a substantial risk reduction of subsequent cardiovascular events leads to a rapid increase in current prescription rates. However, statin use or a lower total cholesterol has been associated with an increased cancer risk, although some deny such an association. Whether a positive statin-cancer association exists or not remains a matter of debate because such a causal association, if any, may offset anticipated cardioprotective benefits from statins. So far, no statin-cancer association in gastric cancer has been systematically highlighted in the literature.

Original studies concerning the effect of statins on gastric cancer incidence were searched in PubMed Central published between 1993 and 2008. A manual search was additionally performed though reference lists in the retrieved manuscripts. Pooled gastric or upper gastrointestinal cancer risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was independently calculated by random effects model, provided by the Cochrane Library software Review Manager 5.

Six publications were considered finally eligible, three were for gastric cancer risk and three were for upper gastrointestinal cancer risk. Statin use proved no significant increase (RR; 1.37, 95% CI; 0.57-3.25) in gastric cancer risk, nor was there any evidence of increased risk (RR; 1.20, 95% CI; 0.94-1.53) even in upper gastrointestinal cancer.

These results suggest that statins had no short-term effect on gastric or upper gastrointestinal cancer incidence. Further investigation of long-term associations between statin use and gastric cancer is warranted.