Use of statins after CRC treatment unlikely to confer large survival benefit

The survival benefit associated with the use of statins in adults treated for colorectal cancer (CRC) is only modest at best, according to a target trial emulation.

Researchers used Korean National Health Insurance Service claims data and identified adults who received treatment following a CRC diagnosis and had no statin prescriptions in the prior 6 months. The primary outcome was CRC-specific mortality, and the secondary outcome was all-cause mortality.

The analysis included 88,516 patients (mean age 62.7 years, 63.7 percent male), of whom 2,071 initiated statins within 6 months after first CRC treatment.

Compared with noninitiation, statin initiation was associated with a 5-percent lower CRC-specific mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.95, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.92–0.99). Statin initiation was also associated with a lower all-cause mortality (HR, 0.96, 95 percent CI, 0.93–1.00), although the difference was not significant.

Between patients who did and did not initiate statins after CRC treatment, the 60-month absolute differences were 1.1 percentage points for in CRC-specific mortality and 2.4 percentage points for all-cause mortality.

In the positive-control cohort with ischaemic heart disease, statin initiation was associated with reduced all-cause mortality but not cardiovascular disease–specific mortality.