Retrospective cohort study of the association of statin use with survival in early breast cancer according to different intrinsic subtypes

Statin use has been associated with improved survival in patients with breast cancer, but there are no data on the association between statin us and survival in different intrinsic breast cancer subtypes. A retrospective population-based cohort study in Finland assessed the associations between statin use and survival in patients with early breast cancer of different intrinsic subtypes. The study included 7389 female patients with early breast cancer diagnosed between 1995 and 2013 with sufficient data for surrogate intrinsic subtyping (median age at diagnosis 60 years; range 21-102). Prediagnostic statin use was nog associated with breast cancer-specific (BCSM) or all-cause mortality (ACM), whereas postdiagnostic statin use was associated with lower age-adjusted BCSM (HR 0.68; 95% CI 0.57-0.82) and ACM (0.83; 0.75-0.92). In a multivariable-adjusted model, statin use was associated with higher breast cancer-specific survival in all hormone receptor-positive subtypes (luminal A-like, luminal B-like HER2-negative and luminal B-like HER2-positive). ACM was lower among statin users with hormone positive and triple-negative subtypes. While the benefit of statin use was noticed in all statin users regardless of dose intensity, a trend of dose-dependent risk reduction was observed regarding BCSM. The authors conclude that these findings suggest that statin therapy may improve survival of patients with early hormone receptor-positive subtypes.