Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology: February, 2022

The incidence rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been increasing for the last 3 decades. Fatty liver progresses from fat accumulation to inflammation to fibrosis to cirrhosis to cancer. 

Recent evidence suggests potential clinical benefits of statin in cancer chemoprevention and treatment. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is expected to become the leading cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

In medical practice, patients and care providers are often concerned about the hepatotoxicity of statins. However, long clinical experience with widespread use of statins has shown that the risk of severe liver injury from statins is fairly low.

The authors aimed to investigate the association between statin initiation and the risk of HCC among patients with NAFLD.

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In this study, a regression model was used to determine the risk for developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in statin initiators versus nonusers in a cohort of 272,431 patients with NAFLD.

The study demonstrated that statin initiators had a 53% lower risk for developing HCC compared with nonusers based on the inverse probability of treatment weighting model.

The reduction of HCC risk was independent of the degree of fibrosis. Increasing dose and duration of statin use were associated with greater reductions in the risk for developing HCC.

These results suggest that statin may be used as a protective medication to reduce the risk of HCC in patients with NAFLD.