Does concurrent statin therapy help men who have EBRT for localized disease?
May 25th, 2010 Posted in prostate chemotherapy, radiation therapyA scientific team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, wanted to investigate the potential impact of statin therapy on biochemical progression-free survival and metastasis-free survival after high-dose radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer. To do this, researchers conducted a retrospective data analysis from a total of 1,711 men initially diagnosed with clinical stage T1-T3 prostate cancer. Subsequently, the cancer patients were treated with conformal external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) to a median dose of 81 Gy during 1995-2007.
First of all, authors conclude that, in their patient cohort, the use of statin therapy during high-dose EBRT for clinically localized prostate cancer was associated with a significant improvement in PSA relapse-free survival in high-risk patients. They further conclude that these data show that statins have anticancer activity and possibly provide radiosensitization when used in conjunction with radiation therapy in the treatment of prostate cancer.