Statin and Other Antilipemic Use and Prostate Cancer: Results from the EPICAP Study

Abstract Background: Antilipemic drugs have been hypothesized to decrease the risk of several cancers; however, results are still conflicting for prostate cancer. Methods: We used data from the EPICAP study, a French population-based case–control study including 819 incident prostate cancer cases and 879 population-based controls frequency-matched by age. Detailed information on the use of antilipemic drugs has been collected. Results: The use of overall antilipemic drugs was not associated with prostate cancer risk, whereas the use of statins, and particularly lipophilic statins, was inversely associated with high-grade prostate cancer with an International Society of Urological Pathology score ≥4 [OR = 0.52; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.27–1.00; OR = 0.30; 95% CI, 0.12–0.77, respectively]. When taking into account the duration of use, long duration (≥10 years) of statin and lipophilic statin was inversely associated with prostate cancer overall (OR = 0.69; 95% CI, 0.47–1.01; OR = 0.54; 95% CI, 0.35–0.85, respectively) and with high-grade prostate cancer (OR = 0.49; 95% CI, 0.24–1.01; OR = 0.26, 95% CI, 0.09–0.72, respectively). Conclusions: Our results showed an inverse association between high-grade prostate cancer and statins, particularly lipophilic statins, and indicated that these associations were more pronounced for long duration. Impact: In a context of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, identifying factors associated with aggressive prostate cancers is important and could help improving targeted screening strategies.