By Admin at 9 Mar 2016, 12:56 PM
About 10 percent to 15 percent of lung cancers are small cell lung cancer (SCLC), a type that tends to spread quickly. As one of the most aggressive types of cancer, SCLC has a five-year survival rate of just over 30 percent when diagnosed in the early stages.
This drops to about 8 percent for late-stage disease. No new classes of treatments have been developed for SCLC in 30 years, leading a collaboration of researchers at Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA) at Western Regional Medical Center (Western) to look into new therapeutic options to target this disease.
It turns out that cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins may present a viable option. The study involved nearly 900 late-stage SCLC patients who were taking different non-cancer drugs, including statins, aspirin, antidepressants (clomipramine or serotonin reuptake inhibitors) or high blood pressure drugs (doxazosin or prazosin).
Only statins showed a statistically significant benefit; those prescribed statins had a medial overall survival rate of 8.4 months compared to 6.1 months in those not taking the drugs. According to the study, which was published in PLOS One:
“Statins, commonly used cholesterol-lowering agents in clinical practice, act on the Ras pathway, have anti-proliferative, pro-apoptotic, and anti-metastatic effects in SCLC.
Statins have been reported to reduce the incidence of lung cancer and also increase the survival of patients with lung cancer.”
Those receiving statins also had significantly better performance on the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status (ECOG PS), which is a measure of a cancer patient’s level of daily functioning.
Among those taking statins, 76 percent had an ECOG PS score of 0-1 compared to 63 percent not taking statins (a score of 0-1 means the patient is either fully active and able to carry on all pre-disease performance or is restricted in physically strenuous activity but ambulatory and able to carry out light house work or office work).
Lung cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer worldwide and is the leading cause of cancer death among men and women in the United States, accounting for about one out of every four cancer deaths. Each year, more people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.
Aside from statin use, the featured study also found that radiation therapy appeared to be an independent predictor of survival in people with stage 4 SCLC.
Sources:
PLOS One January 6, 2016
Science Newsline Medicine January 6, 2016
American Cancer Society February 22, 2016
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