A recent study reveals a very important positive for cholesterol drugs
Experts report that traditional anti-hypercholesterolemic drugs can play a role in inhibiting a gene that promotes metastasis in cancer cells.
Scientists are talking about statin drugs that are prescribed to patients with high cholesterol, which have proven effective in inhibiting the ability of metastases of some cancerous tumors to move freely.
According to the Science Daily, Professor Robert Pressner and scientists at the University of Virginia examined data from a total of 300,000 patients who were prescribed statins.
Based on this, they found that "patients who take statins have half the risk of developing cancer compared to the general population."
To explain how this happens, cancer cells are known to sometimes spread to other parts of the body early in the disease, when the tumor is still very small and may not have been detected yet.
To do this, they must detach from the extracellular matrix and migrate to nearby lymphatic vessels or blood vessels that transport them to new tissues, where they settle and proliferate.
Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms of metastasis is a key piece of the puzzle in the fight against cancer.
More than ten years ago, Professor Ulrich Stein and her laboratory at the Center for Experimental and Clinical Research in Berlin were able to discover an important driver of this process in human colorectal cancer, the so-called metastases associated with colon cancer 1 (MACC1), and these metastases are associated with the spread of many types of colon cancer. Cancers, including tumors of the stomach, liver and breast, which makes the latest discovery important, as it was found that among those who disrupt the ability of these metastases to effectively move are statins, which are prescribed as cholesterol-lowering drugs, according to what was published in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine.
The research indicates that the experiments conducted on mice, led to similar results in “preventing the formation of tumors in animals almost completely”, but that conducting these experiments and drawing their results on humans is still in the forefront, so researchers advise not to neglect consulting doctors before taking cholesterol inhibitors because of Its side effects are known.
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