Purpose: To investigate the association between statin use and stomach cancer incidence in individuals with hypercholesterolemia. Materials and methods: To examine the cumulative effect of statins, we defined a statin user as one who used statins during 2002-2003 at baseline. Statin users were further classified into high and low users according to the medication possession rate. Statin non-users consisted of participants who had never used statins during the entire period of 2002-2015, despite having hypercholesterolemia (total cholesterol level ≥250 mg/dL at baseline). Ultimately, 17,737 statin users and 13,412 statin non-users were used in the analysis. We performed survival analyses, considering the diagnosis of stomach cancer as an event of interest. Results: Median follow-up duration was 12.9 years. The cumulative incidence rates of stomach cancer were lowest in high users (1.90% in men and 0.98% in women). Compared to non-users, hazard ratios (95% confidential intervals) for stomach cancer of low users and high users were 0.953 (0.755-1.203) and 0.526 (0.399-0.693) in men and 0.629 (0.457-0.865) and 0.370 (0.256-0.535) in women, respectively, after adjusting for possible confounders. Conclusions: We observed an inverse association between statin use and stomach cancer incidence in participants with hypercholesterolemia.
Keywords: HMG CoA reductase inhibitors; hypercholesterolemia; incidence; malignant neoplasms; stomach.