The American Cancer Society reports that about 218,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed this year, making it the most common cancer for American men.
The American Heart Association reports that about one-third of men have high LDL cholesterol (the “L-for-lousy” kind), a major risk for developing heart disease.
The connection: Medication to control cholesterol may help prevent recurrence of your prostate cancer.
From 1996 to 2008, researchers followed 1,319 men who had had their prostates removed for cancer treatment. At the time of their surgery, 236 of them were taking statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs). At the study's end, researchers determined that those men were 30% less likely than the other 1,083 men in the study to have a recurrence of their tumor. Those men taking the highest dose of statins saw the greatest reduction.
The results are preliminary, and survival rates were not evaluated. But it could be that for men, treating high cholesterol with statins may be killing two birds with one stone.
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