risks of cholesterol lowering medication - cancer risk

The third and final issue with the statins involves the issue of whether they increase the risk of cancer. This issue received a lot of press recently when a paper was published reviewing the animal data on cholesterol-lowering medication. This paper reviewed the animal studies in which the use of very high doses of the medications was associated with tumors. Most of the tumors were benign (non-cancerous) tumors of the gastrointestinal tract, but some were malignant as well. Is this relevant to people? Most experts think the answer is probably not. There are a variety of reasons for not getting alarmed about these animal studies. The doses used in these studies were much higher than those ever used in people and perhaps most reassuringly, there has not been any evidence in the many millions of people treated with the statin drugs that there is an increase in the incidence of cancer, and none of the controlled studies in people have shown any evidence either. Can this prove that there is absolutely no increased risk associated with these medications, no matter how small? No, but common sense dictates that if your risk of having a heart attack is relatively high, the benefit of taking a medication to lower your cholesterol will far outweigh any small theoretical risk of the medication. Again, the issue comes down to what your risk really is for developing heart disease. Therefore, the overall theme of determining your risk for heart disease will continue to be a major one in the practice of medicine