Statins in risk-reduction and treatment of cancer

Table 2 A summary of recent meta-analyses evaluating the benefits of statins in various types of cancer

Cancer type	No. of clinical trials and subjects included	Objective	Results	Ref.
Active cancer	Ten studies, 1881 individuals with stage 3 or higher disease	To evaluate the randomized controlled trials of statins in addition to standard anticancer therapy	The addition of statins to standard anticancer therapy did not improve overall survival or progression-free survival	[105]
Solid cancer	Eight randomized controlled trials, 1760 patients	To evaluate the effect of statins added to systemic anticancer therapy in patients with solid cancer	The addition of statins to chemotherapy did not significantly increase the incidence of grade 3-5 adverse events, did not improve the overall response rate and failed to prolong the progression-free survival and overall survival compared with that of chemotherapy alone	[106]
Pancreatic cancer	Six retrospective cohort studies, 12057 patients were included	To explore the association between statin and metformin use and overall survival of pancreatic cancer patients	Statin use was associated with a significantly improved overall survival (but with a significant publication bias)	[107]
	Twenty-six studies, more than 3 million participants, 170000 pancreatic cancer patients	The relationship between statin use and the risk of pancreatic cancer	Statins have a protective effect on pancreatic cancer	[108]
Kidney cancer	Twelve studies, 18105 patients	To evaluate the association between statin use and kidney cancer survival outcomes	Statin use was not associated with significant recurrence-free survival or progression-free survival; statin use was associated with marked improvements in cancer-specific survival and overall survival	[109]
Lung cancer	Seventeen studies, 98445 patients	To analyze the impact of statins on mortality and survival of LC patients	Statins were potentially associated with a decreased risk of mortality and an improvement of overall survival in observational studies but not in randomized controlled trials; Statins potentially enhanced the effects of tyrosine kinase inhibitors and chemotherapy on the overall survival of patients with non-small cell LC	[110]