Statin use and breast cancer survival and risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The purpose of this study is to determine the associations between statin use and breast cancer survival and risk by performing a systematic review and meta-analysis. We searched PubMed, Embase and Web of Science up to August 2015 for identifying relevant prospective or case-control studies, or randomized clinical trials. Five prospective studies involving 60,911 patients reported the association between statin use and breast cancer mortality. Eleven prospective studies, 12 case-control studies and 9 randomized clinical trials involving 83,919 patients reported the association between statin use and breast cancer risk. After pooling estimates from all available studies, there was a significantly negative association between pre-diagnosis statin use and breast cancer mortality (for overall survival (OS): hazard ratio (HR) = 0.68, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.54–0.84; for disease specific survival (DSS): HR = 0.72, 95% CI 0.53–0.99). There was also a significant inverse association between post-diagnosis statin use and breast cancer DSS (HR = 0.65, 95% CI 0.43–0.98), although the association with breast cancer OS did not reach statistical significance (HR = 0.71, 95% CI 0.48–1.07). Additionally, there was a non-linear relationship for the duration of post-diagnosis statin use with breast cancer specific mortality. On the other hand, with regards to the relationship between statin use and breast cancer risk, no significant association was detected. Our analyses suggest that although statin use may not influence breast cancer risk, the use of statin may be associated with decrease mortality of breast cancer patients. Further large-scale studies are warranted to validate our findings.