New Study Shows Diet Impacts Statins’ Effect on Ovarian Cancer

Specific substances in an everyday diet can affect the ability of statins to treat ovarian cancer. It's important now that researchers study this further so they can develop guidelines to best make statins most effective for treating patients.

Ovarian cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. Among gynecologic cancers, it's considered the most deadly. This is mostly due to the fact that patients are often diagnosed late in the course of their disease, leaving little hope for effective therapies. Because of its high mortality rate, any potential new treatments become that much more precious. For many of these women, new drugs and therapies are the last hope for possibly finding a cure for this deadly disease. 

According to some studies, cancer cells can be treated potentially by statins. Originally statins were developed to prevent heart disease and against high cholesterol. Enzymes that help in making cholesterol are present in almost 65 percent of ovarian cancers. This enzyme contributes to the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells and it is known as hydroymethylglutarate coenzyme-A reductase. The level of cholesterol is blocked by statin by blocking this enzyme. Thus scientists presume that to fight ovarian cancer they can repurpose this drug.

Thus in theory we can help patients with ovarian cancer by blocking this enzyme but disappointing results have been obtained in clinical research. In eradicating ovarian tumour cells this drug failed to show its dramatic effect in mice and human clinical trials. Thus the scientists were puzzled.  They decided of conducting further research to find out the reason behind this finding.

According to the UK researchers a better result can be obtained from a stable form of statin. Researchers found that in the patient trials the statin used were of unstable form with a short life. Thus they thought that outcome of the clinical trial would change by using a stable form of statin.  They decided of using pitavastatin a more stable form. In the United States this drug is known as Livalo and in Europe it is known as Livazo. It has a longer half-life. The researcher’s team at Keele University found that the ovarian cancer cells were killed by pitavastatin. But in the mouse study this drug could not show its effect. Thus the scientists wondered whether the drug’s ability to kill tumour cells was affected by any substances in our diet.

They found something interesting. They found the dietary effect. Geranylgeraniol is a fat compound. This substance is found in sunflower oil and rice and is an inhibitor of pitavastatin. By feeding mice with different diets they figured out this. One group of mice were fed with diet that was free of that fat compound and it was found that in targeting ovarian cancer cells and reducing their growth, pitavastatin was found to be very effective thus to make this drug work as an anti-tumour therapy we have to adhere to a special diet. Hence if we are taking statins we need to watch what we eat. We are not sure whether the ability of statins to lower cholesterol and protection from heart disease is affected by eating rice or sunflower seeds. To figure out exactly what this means for the patient there definitely needs to be more research. In treating ovarian cancer, to make statins effective we need to know how we can change our diet. Further study needs to be done so that guidelines can be developed. Perhaps statin can be tried by those who have ovarian cancer as long as certain dietary substances are steered clear.

For using pitavastatin to treat ovarian cancer researchers have high hopes. The researchers found the reason why the findings were failing since the statins used was wrong and diet was affecting the effect of the drug. If we use long-acting drugs and a special diet is followed, then statins can potentially treat cancer.