By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Statins may prevent cancer, suggests a new study.
The anti-cholesterol pills taken by millions of people to reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke may also keep cancer at bay by blocking a key inflammatory protein, say American scientists.
Their findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that statins can obstruct a particular pathway involved in the development of cancer that results from chronic inflammation.
Study senior author Professor Shawn Demehri said: “Chronic inflammation is a major cause of cancer worldwide.
“We investigated the mechanism by which environmental toxins drive the initiation of cancer-prone chronic inflammation in the skin and pancreas.
“Furthermore, we examined safe and effective therapies to block this pathway in order to suppress chronic inflammation and its cancer aftermath.”
Demehri, of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and his colleagues’ research involved animal models, human tissue samples and epidemiological data.
The team’s cell-based experiments showed that environmental toxins – such as exposure to allergens and chemical irritants – activate two connected signaling pathways called the TLR3/4 and TBK1-IRF3 pathways.
Demehri explained that the activation leads to the production of the interleukin-33 (IL-33) protein, which stimulates inflammation in the skin and pancreas that can contribute to the development of cancer.
When the team screened several U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved drugs, they found that a statin, pitavastatin, “effectively suppresses” IL-33 expression by blocking the activation of the TBK1-IRF3 signaling pathway.
In mice, pitavastatin suppressed environmentally-induced inflammation in the skin and the pancreas and stopped the development of inflammation-related pancreatic cancers.
Demehri said that, in human pancreas tissue samples, IL-33 was over-expressed in samples from patients with chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer compared with normal pancreatic tissue.
Analysis of electronic health records data from more than 200 million people across Europe and North America also showed that use of pitavastatin was linked to a “significantly” reduced risk of chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.
The research team says that their findings show that blocking IL-33 production with pitavastatin may be a “safe and effective” way to suppress chronic inflammation and the subsequent development of certain cancers.
Demehri, who is also an Associate Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School, added: “Next, we aim to further examine the impact of statins in preventing cancer development in chronic inflammation in liver and gastrointestinal tract and to identify other novel, therapeutic approaches to suppress cancer-prone chronic inflammation.”
