Statins and gastric cancer risk.

Background/aims: Statin is the most promising agent in the improvement of blood lipid profiles, and a substantial risk reduction of subsequent cardiovascular events leads to a rapid increase in current prescription rates. However, statin use or a lower total cholesterol has been associated with an increased cancer risk, although some deny such an association. Whether a positive statin-cancer association exists or not remains a matter of debate because such a causal association, if any, may offset anticipated cardioprotective benefits from statins. So far, no statin-cancer association in gastric cancer has been systematically highlighted in the literature.

Methodology: Original studies concerning the effect of statins on gastric cancer incidence were searched in PubMed Central published between 1993 and 2008. A manual search was additionally performed though reference lists in the retrieved manuscripts. Pooled gastric or upper gastrointestinal cancer risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was independently calculated by random effects model, provided by the Cochrane Library software Review Manager 5.

Results: Six publications were considered finally eligible, three were for gastric cancer risk and three were for upper gastrointestinal cancer risk. Statin use proved no significant increase (RR; 1.37, 95% CI; 0.57-3.25) in gastric cancer risk, nor was there any evidence of increased risk (RR; 1.20, 95% CI; 0.94-1.53) even in upper gastrointestinal cancer.

Conclusions: These results suggest that statins had no short-term effect on gastric or upper gastrointestinal cancer incidence. Further investigation of long-term associations between statin use and gastric cancer is warranted.