Association found between high cholesterol and breast cancer

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Jul-2014

Contact: ESC Press Office press@escardio.org 33-622-418-492 European Society of Cardiology

This news release is available in Spanish.

Barcelona, 4 July 2014: An association between high blood cholesterol and breast cancer has been found in a study of more than 1 million patients over a 14 year time period in the UK. The research will be presented today at Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting is organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in collaboration with 13 European cardiovascular science societies.

http://spo.escardio.org/SessionDetails.aspx?eevtid=65&sessId=13301&subSessId=3494

Dr Rahul Potluri, founder of the ACALM Study Unit and lead author, said: "Our preliminary study suggests that women with high cholesterol in their blood may be at greater risk of getting breast cancer. It raises the possibility of preventing breast cancer with statins, which lower cholesterol, but as this is a primitive study, significant time and research is needed before this idea can be tested."

Over the past few years, population studies have suggested an association between obesity and breast cancer. Last year a study in mice concluded that lowering circulating cholesterol or interfering with its metabolism may be used to prevent or treat breast cancer.1

Dr Potluri said: "We have a general principle that obesity is linked to breast cancer and a study in mice suggested that this may be because of cholesterol. We decided to investigate whether there was any association between hyperlipidaemia, which is high cholesterol essentially, and breast cancer."

The researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of more than 1 million patients across the UK between 2000 and 2013 from the Algorithm for Comorbidities, Associations, Length of stay and Mortality (ACALM) clinical database. There were 664,159 women and of these, 22 938 had hyperlipidaemia and 9 312 had breast cancer. Some 530 women with hyperlipidaemia developed breast cancer.

Read this article:
Association found between high cholesterol and breast cancer