Statins linked to lower risk of colorectal cancer in patients with ulcerative colitis

Cholesterol-lowering statins might protect patients with ulcerative colitis from developing and dying from colorectal cancer. Statin treatment was also associated with a lower risk of death regardless of cause in patients with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease. This is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

The observational study conducted by Dr Sun and his colleagues compared over 10,500 IBD patients from around the country, of whom half were statin users; the other half of the group, who were matched with the first, were not. After a follow-up period of, on average, 5.6 years, 70 of the statin group and 90 of the non-statin group had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

The protective effect was directly proportional to the length of time the patient had been on statins and could be demonstrated after two years’ treatment. There were also fewer deaths from colorectal cancer in the statin group than in the non-statin group during the study period, and deaths regardless of cause.

The study shows that some 200 IBD patients need to be treated with statins to avoid one case of colorectal cancer or death from the cancer within ten years of treatment onset. The protective effect was only statistically valid for patients with ulcerative colitis. Statins were linked to fewer deaths in both ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease patients.

Reference: “Statin use and risk of colorectal cancer in patients with inflammatory bowel disease”, Jiangwei Sun, Jonas Halfvarson, David Bergman, Fahim Ebrahimi, Bjorn Roelstraete, Paul Lochhead, Mingyang Song, Ola Olén, Jonas F. Ludvigsson, eClinicalMedicine, online 24 August 2023, DOI :10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102182.