UPDATE: lower cholesterol may cut risk of high-grade prostate cancer

Not only does having low cholesterol protect the heart, new research indicates that having low cholesterol can also help reduce the chance of men developing high-grade prostate cancer.

The information analyzed for the research was gathered from two different studies. The first was a study carried out in Finland of more than 29,000 local men carried out over 18 years. The second looked at figures collected on over 5,500 men, who had enrolled themselves in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial.

High-grade prostate cancers, called “tigers”, often grow and spread quickly. They are identified by a “Gleason score”, a measurement of aggressiveness between eight and 10. Men whose cholesterol was under 200 had less than half the risk of getting high-grade prostate tumors compared to men with high cholesterol, researchers report.

The research teams involved in both studies warn that they do not know how many men in the studies were taking statin drugs such as Lipitor, Zocor or Crestor, which means that some of the lowered cancer risk may have been a result of these cholesterol-lowering medicines rather than from low cholesterol alone.

Medical experts say it is too soon to advise men to take statin drugs like Lipitor or Crestor in the hope of preventing prostate cancer; however, these drugs are already commonly used to fight against heart disease.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer to be diagnosed in men, and an approximated 192,000 new cases will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year.