Most people are taking statins to lower their cholesterol, right? It’s about reducing your risk of heart disease and stroke. Well, now there is some recent research that finds an association between taking statins and survival of a colorectal cancer diagnosis.
This research is a review of almost 30,000 medical records from the National Veterans Affairs Central Cancer Registry. The review compared survival rate of veterans who took statins and were subsequently diagnosed with colorectal cancer with veterans who weren’t taking statins and diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Those who took statins had an overall 10 year survival rate of 40% compared to 34% in those not taking statins. This difference is statistically significant.
The differences remained consistent when looking at people who were the same age, had their cancer in the same location, had cancer at the same stage, were the same race and had the same cardiovascular problems.
The authors of this research call it preliminary and it is. But interesting associations like this lead to further research to find causality. It would be wonderful to have one drug prevent heart attacks and stroke as well as improve survival from colorectal cancer. Take a look at this study in the Medivizor library.
Feature image by: Image by Phoenix Locklear from Pixabay
