Effect of Statins on the Risk of Different Stages of Prostate Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: The aim of this article was to investigate the relationship between statins and the risk of different stages or grades of prostate cancer.

Methods: A comprehensive literature search was performed for articles published until December 18, 2020, on the PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library databases. The pooled relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were then analyzed using the STATA.16.0 software.

Results: A total of 588,055 patients from 14 studies were included in the analysis. We found that the use of statins expressed a significant correlation with a lower risk of advanced prostate cancer (RR = 0.81, 95% CI: 0.73-0.91; RR = 0.86, 95% CI: 0.75-0.99, respectively). However, no evidence suggested that the use of statins was beneficial for the prevention of localized prostate cancer incidence. Similarly, the pooled results also revealed no association between the use of statins and the risk of high-grade and low-grade prostate cancer.

Conclusion: It has been found that the use of statins is associated with a lower risk of advanced prostate cancer but was not related to the risk of localized, low-grade, or high-grade prostate cancer.

Keywords: Advanced prostate cancer; High-grade prostate cancer; Meta-analysis; Statins.