Post-diagnosis statin use and breast cancer recurrence in a prospective cohort study of early stage breast cancer survivors
Open accessAbstract
Purpose We examined the association between post-diagnosis statin use (3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A [HMG-CoA] inhibitors) and risk of breast cancer recurrence. Materials and methods The study included 1945 early stage breast cancer survivors participating in the Life After Cancer Epidemiology (LACE) Study. Women who were diagnosed from 1997 to 2000 and identified from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) Cancer Registry entered the cohort on average 2 years post-diagnosis. Information on statin use was obtained from the KPNC pharmacy database. A total of 210 breast cancer recurrences were reported and verified by medical record review. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate rate ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results The mean duration of statin use in the cohort among those who initiated use post-diagnosis was 1.96 years, and lipophilic statins were mainly used (97.8%). Starting statins after diagnosis was suggestive of a decreased risk of breast cancer recurrence (RR = 0.67; 95% CI: 0.39-1.13). Risk of recurrence decreased with increasing duration of statin use after diagnosis (p linear trend = 0.02). Conclusion Our findings provide initial support for an inverse association between post-diagnosis, lipophilic statin use and risk of breast cancer recurrence.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Use of statins is associated with increased time to breast cancer recurrence.
“use of cholesterol lowering medication (statins) is associated with increased time to breast cancer recurrence (7–9).”
From Cholesterol efflux protein, ABCA1, supports anticancer functions of myeloid immune cells (2026) · cites this paper as [8]
The Results (page unavailable) report a lower estimated recurrence risk among survivors who used statins after diagnosis, consistent with a longer time to recurrence. But the estimate was not statistically significant (RR 0.67; 95% CI 0.39–1.13), and the Discussion says chance cannot be ruled out. The claim presents the association more definitively than the paper does. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Statin use and reduced cancer-related mortality
Nielsen, S. F., Nordestgaard, B. G., & Bojesen, S. E. (2012) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa1201735 · Cited by 1,030 · see citing works
Hypercholesterolemia Induces Angiogenesis and Accelerates Growth of Breast Tumors In Vivo
Pelton, K., Coticchia, C. M., Curatolo, A. S., Schaffner, C. P., Zurakowski, D., Solomon, K. R., & Moses, M. A. (2014) · The American Journal of Pathology · doi:10.1016/j.ajpath.2014.03.006 · Cited by 109 · see citing works
Cholesterol efflux protein, ABCA1, supports anticancer functions of myeloid immune cells
Bendre, S. V., Wang, Y., Hajyousif, B., K C, R., Bhogale, S. G., Pradeep, D., Krawczynska, N., Schane, C. P., Weisser, E., Singh, A., et al. (2026) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.adx5490 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kwan, M. L., Habel, L. A., Flick, E. D., Quesenberry, C. P., & Caan, B.
- Affiliations
- Kaiser Permanente (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kwan, Marilyn L.
- Venue
- Breast Cancer Research and Treatment
- Published
- 2007-08-03
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 573-579
- ISSN
- 0167-6806 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-7217
- PMC
- PMC3507509
- OpenAlex
- W2037877663
- Cited by
- 175
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 2.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Breast Cancer Research and Treatment (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Kaiser Permanente
- Utah Department of Health
- National Institutes of Health (n01pc067000-000, n01cn067000-000)
- National Cancer Institute (N01 PC67000, R01 CA80027, R01CA129059, N01 CN067000, R01CA080027)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cancer Research › Cancer, Lipids, and Metabolism
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cancer Risks and Factors
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cancer Research › Breast Cancer Treatment Studies
- Keywords
- statins, breast cancer recurrence, lipophilic statins, statin duration
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Breast Neoplasms, Female, Humans, Middle Aged, Neoplasm Recurrence, Local, Neoplasm Staging, Prospective Studies, Cohort Studies, Case-Control Studies, Hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitors
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
