Inverse association between statin use and stomach cancer incidence in individuals with hypercholesterolemia, from the 2002–2015 NHIS-HEALS data

Purpose: To investigate the association between statin use and stomach cancer incidence in individuals with hypercholesterolemia. Materials and methods: To examine the cumulative effect of statins, we defined a statin user as one who used statins during 2002–2003 at baseline. Statin users were further classified into high and low users according to the medication possession rate. Statin non-users consisted of participants who had never used statins during the entire period of 2002– 2015, despite having hypercholesterolemia (total cholesterol level ≥250 mg/dL at baseline). Ultimately, 17,737 statin users and 13,412 statin non-users were used in the analysis. We performed survival analyses, considering the diagnosis of stomach cancer as an event of interest. Results: Median follow-up duration was 12.9 years. The cumulative incidence rates of stomach cancer were lowest in high users (1.90% in men and 0.98% in women). Compared to non-users, hazard ratios (95% confidential intervals) for stomach cancer of low users and high users were 0.953 (0.755–1.203) and 0.526 (0.399–0.693) in men and 0.629 (0.457–0.865) and 0.370 (0.256–0.535) in women, respectively, after adjusting for possible confounders. Conclusions: We observed an inverse association between statin use and stomach cancer incidence in participants with hypercholesterolemia.