New research suggests a link between high blood cholesterol and breast cancer.
European Society of Cardiology researchers looked at more than one million patients over the course of 14 years to make their findings, which were presented at Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2014 in Barcelona, Spain.
"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," said Doctor Rahul Potluri, founder of the ACALM Study Unit and lead author.
In recent years population studies have suggested an association between obesity and breast cancer; a recent rodent study found lowering circulating cholesterol could help treat breast cancer.
"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," Potluri said.
Using a statistical model, the team found having hyperlipidaemia increased the risk of breast cancer by 1.64 times.
"We found that women with high cholesterol had a significantly greater chance of developing breast cancer. This was an observational study so we can't conclude that high cholesterol causes breast cancer but the strength of this association warrants further investigation," Potluri said.
The study was only preliminary, but the researchers believe the results are promising."Caution is needed when interpreting our results because while we had a large study population, our analysis was retrospective and observational with inherent limitations. That said, the findings are exciting and further research in this field may have a big impact on patients several years down the line," Potluri said.
