Statin Use and Its Impact on Survival in Pancreatic Cancer Patients

Statins are cholesterol-lowering medications that are associated with a number of signaling pathways involved in carcinogenesis. Recent observational studies raised the possibility that the use of statins may reduce overall mortality in various types of cancer. We investigated whether statins used after pancreatic cancer diagnosis are associated with longer survival in pancreatic cancer patients. We retrospectively analyzed data from 1761 patients newly diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2014. We used the time-dependent Cox proportional hazards regression model to estimate mortality among pancreatic cancer patients according to statin use. Among the 1761 pancreatic cancer patients, 118 patients had used statins. During the study period, 1176 patients (66.7%) died. After adjusting for age, sex, location of cancer, cancer stage, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia, smoking, alcohol use, body mass index, and CA 19-9, statin use was associated with a lower risk of cancer death (hazard ratio [HR], 0.780; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.617–0.986), especially among simvastatin users (HR, 0.554; 95% CI, 0.312–0.982) and atorvastatin users (HR, 0.636; 95% CI, 0.437–0.927). Subgroup analysis showed that overall survival was statistically significantly longer in patients with nonmetastatic pancreatic cancer (log-rank P = 0.024). We found that the use of simvastatin and atorvastatin after cancer diagnosis is associated with longer survival in patients with nonmetastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma.