October 19, 2023
Vicki Moore, PhD
In patients with polycythemia vera (PV) or essential thrombocythemia (ET), researchers found that statin therapy was associated with possible benefits related to survival and thrombosis in a new study. The researchers reported their findings in the journal Cancer Medicine.
In this cohort analysis, the researchers evaluated data on statin use and outcomes for 4010 adults with PV or ET who were of age 66 through 99 years at diagnosis and who were identified through the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare database.
The researchers analyzed patients in 2 cohorts, based on using either propensity score matching (PSM) or inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW), to evaluate possible relationships between statin use and outcomes. Cox proportional hazards analyses were performed to evaluate outcomes related to survival and first incident thrombotic events. The median follow-up time was 3.92 years.
The study included 1809 patients with PV and 2201 patients with ET. Patients had a median age at diagnosis of 77 years in both the PV and ET subgroups. In the first year after being diagnosed with PV or ET, over half (55.8%) of the patients overall had used statins.
For patients with PV, with a median follow-up of 4.00 years, 35.0% of those who used statins had died whereas 43.0% of patients not using statins had died. Among patients with ET, at a median follow-up of 3.84 years, deaths were reported among 35.7% of those who used statins and in 40.9% of those who did not use statins. A sensitivity analysis suggested that survival differences with statin use were significant for patients who had not been receiving statin therapy prior to their PV or ET diagnosis.
Statin use also was associated with a lower risk of thrombosis across the overall study population. In the PSM cohort, the HR was 0.63 (95% CI, 0.51-0.78; P <.01) for this association, and in the IPTW cohort, the HR was 0.57 (95% CI, 0.49-0.66; P <.01). A lower risk of thrombosis with statin use was also observed in PV and ET subgroups.
“Overall, our study demonstrated that statins improved survival and decreased the incidence of thrombotic events in older patients with PV and ET,” the researchers wrote in their report.
Reference
Podoltsev NA, Wang R, Shallis RM, et al. Statin use, survival and incidence of thrombosis among older patients with polycythemia vera and essential thrombocythemia. Cancer Med. Published online September 13, 2023. doi:10.1002/cam4.6528