Statins, especially atorvastatin, may favorably influence clinical
presentation and biochemical progression-free survival after
brachytherapy for clinically localized prostate cancer.

Department of Complementary/Alternative Medicine, University of Michigan
Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.

OBJECTIVES: To conduct a preliminary investigation on statin use and its
impact on clinical presentation and biochemical progression-free
survival after brachytherapy.

METHODS: A total of 512 consecutive patients were treated with permanent
brachytherapy for clinical Stage T1c-T3aNxM0 prostate cancer at least 3
years before analysis. Biochemical progression-free survival was defined
by a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level of 0.4 ng/mL or less after
nadir. The median follow-up was 5.3 years. The clinical, treatment, and
dosimetric parameters evaluated included use of any and specific
statins, age, body mass index, PSA level, Gleason score, percentage of
positive biopsies, perineural invasion, prostate volume, planning
volume, dosimetric quality, supplemental external beam radiotherapy,
tobacco use, hypertension, and diabetes.

RESULTS: The actuarial 8-year biochemical progression-free survival rate
for the entire group was 94.6%. On forward conditional Cox regression
analysis, the pretreatment PSA level and percentage of positive biopsies
were statistically significant predictors of biochemical outcome.
However, a significantly lower pretreatment PSA level, percentage of
positive biopsy cores, and PSA density and earlier clinical stage were
found in the statin group. Almost every clinical presentation parameter
comparison at least favored statin users. When stratified by any or
specific statin use, 97.0% of patients taking statins compared with
94.3% not taking statins and 97.8% of patients taking atorvastatin
compared with 94.7% taking other statins were free of biochemical
progression.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of this brachytherapy investigation with the
longest reported follow-up period to date suggest that statins,
especially atorvastatin, may improve most clinical presentations with a
nonsignificant improvement in 8-year biochemical progression-free
survival.

PMID: 16360430 [PubMed - in process]

knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional    
"Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is
invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so."
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