United States: In an important revelation, a study showed a readily available and relatively affordable medication that helps restore cholesterol levels and reduces the risk of cancer.
More about the news
Research led by the Mass General Cancer Cancer Center indicates that some drugs called statins, used to reduce cholesterol levels, could prevent the development of a particular type of cancer, which develops because of inflammation in the human body.
The study findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
Demehri, who worked as a principal investigator at the Center for Cancer Immunology and Cutaneous Biology Research Center of Massachusetts General Hospital and is an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, was the lead study author.
He said, “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,” as the New York Post reported.
What more has the study revealed?
According to the study authors, chronic inflammation caused more than 20 percent of cancer cases across the globe, while Yale Medicine notes that almost 40 million Americans consume statins.
Moreover, as statins are a common and cheap drug, the study might help in considerably decreasing the risk of development of cancer among people with the help provided in suppressing chronic inflammation.
For the study purposes, human tissue samples, animal models, and epidemiological data were examined.
Cancer development paths
While studying cells and treating them with chemical irritants and allergens, scientists concluded that two pathways become activated and turn out producing a certain protein that causes inflammation of the skin and pancreas. That inflammation can cause cancer as a result of free radical production.
Scientists also found out that one particular form of statin, known as pitavastatin, was capable of halting the activation of the cancer protein by inhibiting a certain signal.
They also discovered that for mice, the statin reduced the inflammation resulting from exposure to environmental toxicants, which effectively prevented instances of inflammation-mediated pancreatic cancer.
In their future work, they aim to discover other approaches through which statins can help combat cancer-causing inflammation.
Demehri added, “Next, we aim to further examine the impact of statins in preventing cancer development in chronic inflammation in the liver and gastrointestinal tract and to identify other novel, therapeutic approaches to suppress cancer-prone chronic inflammation.”