Statin use alone or in combination with metformin tied to lower all-cause, prostate cancer mortality
FRIDAY, Feb. 28, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Statin use alone or in combination with metformin is associated with lower all-cause and prostate cancer (PCa) mortality among high-risk patients, according to a study published online Feb. 8 in Cancer Medicine.
Xiang-Lin Tan, M.D., Ph.D., from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick, and colleagues used Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare linked data to quantify the individual and joint effects of statin and metformin use among 12,700 patients with high-risk PCa.
The researchers found that statin use alone or in combination with metformin was significantly associated with reduced all-cause mortality (hazard ratios, 0.89 and 0.75, respectively) and PCa mortality (hazard ratios, 0.80 and 0.64, respectively). In postdiagnosis users, the effect was greater with combination use of metformin/statins, with a 32 percent reduction in all-cause mortality and a 54 percent reduction in PCa mortality. There were no significant associations between metformin use alone and either all-cause mortality or PCa mortality. All brands of statins, except lovastatin, were significantly associated with the reduction in PCa mortality.
“[The] combination of metformin and statin holds great promise for reducing all-cause or PCa mortality among patients with high-risk PCa, particularly in postdiagnostic settings,” the authors write.
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