• Abhinav Gupta, William Stokes, Megan Eguchi, Mohammad Hararah, Arya Amini, Adam Mueller, Rustain Morgan, Cathy Bradley, David Raben, Jessica McDermott, and Sana D Karam.
• Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado, Denver, United States.
• Oral Oncol. 2019 Mar 1; 90: 54-66.

ObjectivesStudies have shown the utility of lipid-lowering agents in improving outcomes in various cancers. We aim to explore how statins affect overall survival and cancer specific survival in head and neck cancer patients using population-based datasets.Patients And MethodsUsing the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare linked dataset, we separated HNC patients into three groups: those with no hyperlipidemia (nH), those with hyperlipidemia and not taking a statin (HnS), and those with hyperlipidemia and taking a statin (H + S). Overall survival (OS) and cancer specific survival (CSS) were compared between the three groups based on disease subsite (oral cavity, oropharynx, and other) using Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox regression analysis (MVA), controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, staging, treatment, and comorbidity covariates. Using Pearson chi-square analysis, we also compared the incidence of cancer-related toxicity events.ResultsThere were 495 nH, 567 HnS, and 530 H + S patients. H + S patients had superior OS and CSS (73.0, 81.2%) relative to nH (58.6, 69.1%) and HnS groups (61.7, 69.2%) (p < 0.01). On MVA, H + S patients showed improved OS (p < 0.01) and CSS (p = 0.04) compared to nH (HR = 1.64, 1.56) and HnS (HR = 1.40, 1.37). MVA stratified by subsite yielded similar results for oral cavity and oropharyngeal disease. Toxicity-related events did not differ significantly between the groups.ConclusionHNC patients with hyperlipidemia and taking a statin demonstrated improved outcomes compared to nH and HnS patients, further supporting statins' role as a potential adjuvant anti-neoplastic agent in HNC. Further prospective studies to investigate the impact of statins on HNC outcomes are warranted.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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