Receipt of Statins Is Associated With Lower Risk of Multiple Myeloma: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Studies on receipt of statins and risk of multiple myeloma (MM) yielded conflicting results. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted in order to comprehensively investigate the relationship between receipt of statins and risk of MM.

Potentially eligible studies that compared the risk of MM between statin recipients and those who did not receive statins were identified from Medline and Embase databases from inception to August 2019 using a search strategy that comprised terms for "statin" and "multiple myeloma." To be eligible, cohort studies must have recruited 2 groups of participants, statin recipients and nonrecipients, and followed their participants for incident MM. Eligible case-control studies must have recruited cases of MM and controls without MM, and must have explored the history of receipt of statins. Relative risk, hazard risk ratio, standardized incidence ratio, or odds ratio (OR) of this association must be reported. Relative risk and standard error from each study were extracted and combined using random-effect generic inverse variance. Relative risk of cohort study was used as an estimate for OR to calculate the pooled effect estimate along with the OR of the case-control studies.

A total of 1744 articles were identified using the search strategy, and 10 studies were included in the meta-analysis. The odds of MM were significantly lower among statin recipients than nonrecipients, with a pooled OR of 0.80 (95% confidence interval, 0.68-0.93; I² 72%). The funnel plot was relatively symmetrical and did not suggest publication bias.

Receipt of statins is associated with a significant 20% reduction in the odds of MM.