This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Statins reduced risk for cancer, mortality in heart transplant recipients

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Patients undergoing heart transplantation who were prescribed statins experienced reductions in the risk for cancer and all-cause mortality, according to data presented at the European Society of Cardiology 2012 Heart Failure Congress.

Further, the beneficial effect of statins on preventing cancer and reducing death from all causes was independent of patients’ cholesterol levels, researchers said.

The study included 255 patients who underwent heart transplantation at the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland between 1985 and 2007 and were alive after the first year. The primary endpoint was occurrence of any cancer and the secondary endpoint was overall survival.

Forty-two percent of patients were diagnosed with malignancy during follow-up. Study results showed the hazard of occurrence of any malignancy was reduced by 65% with the use of statins (P<.0001). Eight years after transplantation, the cumulative incidence of tumors in patients was 34% in patients who did not receive a statin compared with 13% in patients who did receive a statin (P=.003). This reduction persisted at 10- year follow-up (39% vs. 18%) and 12-year follow-up (42% vs. 22%).

 Statin use was also associated with improved cancer-free and overall survival (P<.0001 for both).

“We have shown that statin therapy prevents cancer in heart transplant recipients and it is known that statins also prevent graft atherosclerosis,” Frank Enseleit, MD, deputy director of HF and transplantation at the University Hospital Zurich, said in a press release. “We have to conclude that it should be a lifelong therapy in heart transplant recipients.”

Disclosure: Dr. Enseleit reports no relevant financial disclosures.