Women with high cholesterol levels enjoy a high level of protection against breast cancer – possibly because of the treatments they take, a European conference has heard.
Researchers at Aston Medical School, Birmingham, UK, reached their conclusions from a longitudinal study of more than 1.2 million patient records.
The link is probably the result of women taking statins for hyperlipidaemia, they told the conference of the European Society of Cardiology in Barcelona, Spain.
The researchers identified some 16,000 women with hyperlipidaemia among the patient group. They found that over a 13 year period they were 45% less likely than other women to develop breast cancer.
Researcher Dr Paul Carter said: "I don’t think at the moment we can give statins to prevent or reduce mortality from breast cancer per se. But a positive result in a clinical trial could change this and it is an exciting and rapidly progressing field.”
He explained: “Our research confirms that women with a diagnosis of high cholesterol have strikingly lower rates of breast cancer with improved death rates and survival.
"Building on previous research by us and other groups, including animal studies in which statins reduced the risk of breast cancer, this gives a strong indication that statins produce this protective effect in breast cancer.”
Abstract: Patients with a diagnosis of hyperlipidaemia have a reduced risk of developing breast cancer and lower mortality rates: a large retrospective longitudinal cohort study from the UK ACALM registry
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