Aspirin, statins and metformin
Three Common Medications Prevent lung cancer
Korean scientists have found that the combined use of three very common drugs reduces the risk of morbidity and mortality from lung cancer. The results are published in the journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer Journal of Thoracic Oncology (Kang et al., Associations of aspirin, statins, and metformin with lung cancer risk and related mortality: time-dependent analysis of population-based nationally representative data).
Lung cancer is one of the most common and difficult to treat types of cancer. Therefore, medical scientists are constantly looking for ways to prevent this cancer.
Researchers from South Korea decided to assess the risk of lung cancer in those who regularly take widespread medications – metformin, statins and aspirin.
According to medical statistics, more than 120 million people in the world take metformin daily to fight diabetes, 35 million take statins to control cholesterol, and another six to ten million take aspirin every day. All three types of drugs are available without a prescription.
The authors analyzed the database of the Korean National Health Insurance Service (KNHIS), covering the entire 50 million population of the country, and selected from it the results for 732,199 Koreans who were observed by doctors in the period from January 2004 to December 2013.
Scientists divided the sample into eight groups to see the effect of each of the drugs separately, as well as to evaluate the effect of their combined action.
Scientists noted a noticeable positive effect among those who took all three groups of drugs. These turned out to be about 3.4 percent of the entire cohort – 23,163 people. Compared with the rest, the incidence of lung cancer in this group was 17 percent lower, and the mortality rate was the same.
"As far as we know, no study has previously evaluated the combined effect of aspirin, statins and metformin on the incidence and mortality from lung cancer," the association's press release quotes the words of the lead author of the study, MD Dong Wook Shin from the Medical School of Songyugwan University in Seoul.
At the same time, the longer people took medications, the stronger the effect was. Hence, the authors conclude that regular long-term joint intake of aspirin, statins and metformin can be considered a proven factor in reducing the risk of lung cancer.
"These results are consistent with data from other studies indicating that aspirin and metformin synergistically inhibit cancer cell proliferation by activating AMP-activated protein kinase, which plays a critical role in regulating lipogenesis in cancer cells," says Dr. Shin.
The authors believe that the combined use of aspirin, statins and metformin simultaneously suppresses several molecular pathways of growth and reproduction of lung cancer cells, and this is associated with a reduction in the risks of morbidity and mortality.
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