Among men taking statins equivalent to 20 mg of simvastatin a day, the risk of recurrence was reduced 43 percent and among the men taking the equivalent of more than 20 mg of simvastatin a day, the risk of recurrence was reduced 50 percent. Men who took a statin dose the equivalent of less than 20 mg of simvastatin daily saw no benefit.

There were significant differences between those who took the drugs and those who did not. Statin users tended to be white, older and heavier than non-users. They also had lower clinical stages at diagnosis, but higher Gleason scores, a measure of tumor aggressiveness.

"These findings are intriguing, but we do need to approach them with some caution," says Robert Hamilton, M.D., a urologist at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the study. "For example, we don't know the diet, exercise or smoking habits of these men. So it's not entirely clear if the lower risk we detected is related to the statins alone - it could be due to other factors we were not able to measure. We do feel, however, that based on these findings and those from other studies, the time is ripe to perform a well-controlled randomized trial to test whether statins do indeed slow prostate cancer progression."

Source: Duke University Medical Center