Commonly used medications and endometrial cancer survival: a population-based cohort study

Background: Increasing incidence and new indications for existing drugs make it important to identify new adjuvant therapies for endometrial cancer (EC).

Methods: This is a prospective cohort study of 3058 newly diagnosed EC cases from 1998 to 2010, identified through record linkages between the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink, the National Cancer Research Datalink and death registrations from the Office of National Statistics. Using Cox regression models, unadjusted and adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for EC-specific survival.

Results: Over a mean 6.1 (range 1–16) years of follow-up, there were 394 EC-specific deaths. There was no evidence of a significant association between post-diagnostic use of statins (adjusted HR 0.83, 95% CI 0.64, 1.08), β-blockers (adjusted HR 0.86, 95% CI 0.65, 1.13) or low-dose aspirin (adjusted HR 0.91, 95% CI 0.69, 1.20) and EC survival before or after adjustment for confounders. There were also no evidence of a dose–response association between these drug groups and EC survival.

Conclusions: In this large UK population-based study, no significant associations were observed for post-diagnostic use of statins, β-blockers or low-dose aspirin and EC survival.

Br J Cancer 2017; 117: 432–438. doi:10.1038/bjc.2017.207