LDL Cholesterol and its Association with Cancer: July 24, 2007

July 24th, 2007, C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

View the TV interview here

Boston MA: Don't stop your statin therapy, but researchers today at Boston's Tufts Medical School report an association between the risk of subsequent cancer and a patient's LDL cholesterol at the end of lipid-lowering therapy in this week's Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Richard Karas, M.D., senior author of the study told WikiDoc that "This is an association and we have not identified the causal links if any between cholesterol levels and cancer. It is important to note that we are not saying that statins cause cancer. Indeed some studies have shown a lower rate of cancer development among patients treated with statin therapy."

Karas went on to say "We have identified no causal links between LDL cholesterol levels and cancer". When asked if the low LDL could simply be a marker of future risk rather than a cause of cancer, Karas replied "yes". "It is possible that low LDL is a marker of some type of metabolic difference in those patients who go on to develop cancer". It could also be speculated that patients with high LDLs may die of cardiovascular causes, and this leaves a remaining population of patients who are at low risk of cardiovascular death, but who eventually die of other causes such as cancer. In a sense, there are competing causes of death, and low LDL cholesterol identifies a population who are at low risk of cardiovascular death, but since cancer is another leading cause of death, they die of that."

With respect to other complications of lipid lowering therapy, there were some indications that high doses of statins may be associated with myositis (muscle inflammation) and liver function tests abnormalities. Karas stated that "Although we did not find that a patient's LDL cholesterol was associated with the risk of developing myositis or liver function test abnormalities, we did find that higher doses of statins were associated with a higher risk of myositis and liver function test abnormalities."