Statins and risk of cancer: A meta-analysis of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials

MK Kim, SK Myung, BT Tran, B Park

Indian Journal of Cancer 2017 54(2):470-477

PURPOSE: Several meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) reported no association between the use of statins and the risk of cancer. However, they included open-label RCTs, which did not use placebo as a control group. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of statins on cancer risk using a meta-analysis of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials (RDBPCTs). METHODS: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library in March 2016. Two individual authors reviewed and selected RDBPCTs based on selection criteria. RESULTS: Out of 676 retrieved articles, a total of 21 RDBPCTs with 65,196 participants (32,618 in the statin group and 32,578 in the placebo group) were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, we found that there was no significant association between the use of statins and the risk of cancer (relative risk 0.97, 95% confidence interval 0.92–1.02, I2 = 0.0%) in a fixed-effect meta-analysis. In addition, in the subgroup meta-analyses, no beneficial effect of statins was observed when analyzed by statin type, country, follow-up period, methodological quality, underlying diseases/population, and type of cancer. CONCLUSIONS: The current meta-analysis of RDBPCTs found that there was no association between the use of statins and the risk of cancer.

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