Safety of Statins: To Whom Do You Believe?

If you ask the pharmaceutical industry and many public health advocates, eventually everyone should be taking the class of the cholesterol-lowering medication called statins. However, if you pay attention to research that has come out over the last few years, the safety of statins should give one pause for concern.

Aside from increased risk for muscle pain, memory loss, and diabetes that the FDA added to statins' warning labels, a new study published in the July 5th issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention indicates that women who are long-term users of statin drugs have between 83-143% increased risk of breast cancer.

Whereas recent publicity on statin drugs has focused on their potential use for cancer prevention or as anti-cancer agents, this study found exactly the opposite with current users of statins for 10 years or longer having a 1.83-fold increased risk of invasive ductal carcinoma and a 1.97-fold increased risk of invasive lobular carcinoma compared to subjects who never used statins.

This latest study could indicate a more serious problem, namely, that cholesterol-lowering drugs and statin drugs in particular are carcinogenic. Statin drugs, in fact, have long been suspected to increase the risk of certain cancers, including prostate, colorectal, and kidney; conversely, low cholesterol has been found to increase the risk of cancer at all sites, further implicating these cholesterol-lowering agents as possible carcinogens.

This latest finding is all the more reason why dietary and nutritional interventions should be considered a first line defense against high cholesterol, and why addressing inflammation should take priority over cholesterol as the primary contributing factor in heart disease.