Researchers from the Tufts University School of Medicine triggered concern last year when they found cancer rates rose in tandem with lower cholesterol levels in patients taking the pills known as statins. The new report shows nearly an identical relationship of more malignancies in people with lower cholesterol, even when they weren't taking the medications.
The findings appear to clear drugs including Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor and AstraZeneca Plc's Crestor from responsibility for the cancers, said Richard Karas, director of preventive cardiology at Tufts Medical Center and the senior author of the paper. The results also may reassure patients about another recent study that linked Vytorin, a cholesterol pill from Schering-Plough Corp. and Merck & Co., to cancer, he said. It's important that people don't worry that their medicines may be contributing to cancer,'' Karas said in a telephone interview. ``Our analysis says that they don't. It is your starting cholesterol level, not doing anything to alter it, that is associated with your risk of cancer.''
The study, which analyzed the findings from 15 statin trials involving nearly 100,000 patients, appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Because each person's data wasn't reviewed, the researchers were unable to pinpoint the reason cancer rates rose as cholesterol fell.
Cancers Diagnosed
Overall, there were 12.7 cancers diagnosed for each 1,000 patients given statins every year, and 12.6 cancers for each 1,000 people in the comparison groups who didn't get the pills. The drugs lowered LDL or ``bad'' cholesterol by an average of 40 points in the studies, without changing the total cancer risk. As a result, the cancer risk was lower in statin patients than in those not taking the drugs at each cholesterol level.
The findings aren't definitive and don't prove that getting cholesterol levels down to really low levels is safe when it comes to cancer, said Anthony DeMaria, editor-in-chief of the journal, and Ori Ben-Yehuda from the University of California, San Diego Medical Center, in an editorial.
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