Men who take cholesterol-lowering statins have a 24% lower risk of an aggressive prostate cancer and, with or without metformin, an increased survival time, but no reduced level of developing prostate cancer per se.
Two studies show that men who take statins when they have prostate cancer have increased survival times.
First, men who took cholesterol-lowering statins have a 24% lower risk of an aggressive prostate cancer, but no reduced level of developing prostate cancer per se. This 2019 research, from the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology and the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's University Belfast, was trying to shed light on statin use with prostate cancer as other studies had previously noted statin benefits with cancer in general. The team say that this is just the start of their research.
Next, 2020 research from the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center - Jefferson Health in Philadelphia studied statin use along with metformin, in 13,000 patients with high grade prostate cancer (a Gleason score over 8). Those who took both a statin and metformin had a median survival of 3.9 years. If the statin was taken alone, median survival was 3.6 years; metformin on its own showed no survival advantage at 3.1 years.
Chris Woollams, a founder of CANCERactive and former Oxford Biochemist said, “We have a ton of research on this subject on the CANCERactive Website. We are very clear that higher blood fat levels promote cancer spread. There is research showing higher blood fat prompts more lung cancer in smokers; switching to a low fat diet increases breast cancer survival; there has been research showing people with higher levels of blood fats have more metastases and survive least. We have articles on atorvastatin and other off-label drugs helping fight cancer by lowering cholesterol.
Moreover, Harvard Medical School have produced a number of studies showing that the fat-lowering natural antioxidant lycopene from tomatoes is associated with less aggressive and less fatal prostate cancer. All these researchers had to do was read our Website and they could have saved their money. This is hardly new news to CANCERactive readers, especially men with prostate cancer”.
Go to: Is Lycopene better than statins at lowering blood fats?