London: Cholesterol lowering drugs like statins, taken by millions to combat heart disease, could help reduce fatalities in prostate cancer, new research has found.
US studies suggest that high cholesterol levels could also up risks of prostate cancer, which could be lowered with a daily dose of statins.
In the first study based on 30,000 men, those with high cholesterol levels were found to be 22 percent more likely to suffer a prostate tumour than those with low or normal readings.
They were also 85 percent more at risk of developing a serious, fast-growing form of the disease, according to researchers at the National Cancer Institute in America, the Daily Mail reports.
"Statins may reduce the risk of advanced prostate cancer by lowering cholesterol," the journal Cancer Causes and Control journal reports.
In the second study, a team at the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio, looked at tissue samples from more than 4,000 men who underwent biopsies because doctors suspected they had prostate cancer.
Those taking statins were nearly 10 percent less likely to be diagnosed with a tumour and 24 percent less likely to have an aggressive cancer than men who were not.
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