• Christie Y Jeon, Stephen J Pandol, Bechien Wu, Galen Cook-Wiens, Roberta A Gottlieb, C Noel Bairey Merz, Noel Bairey Merz, and Marc T Goodman.
• Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America; Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America; Department of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
• Plos One. 2015 Jan 1; 10 (4): e0121783.

BackgroundPancreatic cancer has poor prognosis and existing interventions provide a modest benefit. Statin has anti-cancer properties that might enhance survival in pancreatic cancer patients. We sought to determine whether statin treatment after cancer diagnosis is associated with longer survival in those with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).MethodsWe analyzed data on 7813 elderly patients with PDAC using the linked Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) - Medicare claims files. Information on the type, intensity and duration of statin use after cancer diagnosis was extracted from Medicare Part D. We treated statin as a time-dependent variable in a Cox regression model to determine the association with overall survival adjusting for follow-up, age, sex, race, neighborhood income, stage, grade, tumor size, pancreatectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, obesity, dyslipidemia, diabetes, chronic pancreatitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).ResultsOverall, statin use after cancer diagnosis was not significantly associated with survival when all PDAC patients were considered (HR = 0.94, 95%CI 0.89, 1.01). However, statin use after cancer diagnosis was associated with a 21% reduced hazard of death (Hazard ratio = 0.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.67, 0.93) in those with grade I or II PDAC and to a similar extent in those who had undergone a pancreatectomy, in those with chronic pancreatitis and in those who had not been treated with statin prior to cancer diagnosis.ConclusionsWe found that statin treatment after cancer diagnosis is associated with enhanced survival in patients with low-grade, resectable PDAC.

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