14 DAY TRIAL // By the looks of it, women whose cholesterol levels do not fall within normal limits and are instead fairly elevated would do well to keep an eye open for any signs that they might also be suffering from breast cancer.
Thus, a team of researchers now say that, according to recent evidence, high cholesterol and an increased breast cancer risk appear to go hand in hand, EurekAlert informs.
The specialists argue that, after monitoring over 1 million patients in the United Kingdom over a period of time of 14 years, they found that those who had high cholesterol were more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer.
Specifically, having high cholesterol levels appears to go hand in hand with a breast cancer risk that is up to 1.64 times higher than that documented in the case of women who have no issues with their cholesterol levels.
“We found that women with high cholesterol had a significantly greater chance of developing breast cancer,” study lead author Dr. Rahul Potluri comments on the outcome of this study in a recent interview.
For the time being, researchers cannot say how and why high cholesterol levels and increased cancer risk influence each other. Hence, they recommend that future investigations into the matter at hand be carried out.
More so given the fact that, if it were indeed true that high cholesterol ups breast cancer risk, it might be possible to use statins, which lower cholesterol, to prevent or maybe even treat cancer.
“This was an observational study so we can't conclude that high cholesterol causes breast cancer but the strength of this association warrants further investigation,” Dr. Rahul Potluri explains.
“If the connection between high cholesterol and breast cancer is validated, the next step would be to see if lowering cholesterol with statins can reduce the risk of developing cancer,” the researcher adds.