Statins Increase — Not Decrease — the Risk of Prostate Cancer, says Dr. Russell Blaylock

A just-released study made headlines claiming that cholesterol-lowering drugs also lower a man's risk of dying from prostate cancer. But no one should consider taking statins for their cancer-preventive effects, says Dr. Russell Blaylock, renowned neurosurgeon and editor of the Blaylock Wellness Report: "Statins are more likely to raise your risk of developing prostate cancer — or any cancer — because they are powerful immune suppressants.

"Other studies, studies that appear to be better done than the recent study, show that statin use actually increased the risk of prostate cancer and had no effect in preventing cancer.

"One study, which involved many more people and was conducted by top-notch researchers at the Cancer Research Center, Albert Einstein College, and the National Institutes of Health, found a significant increase in the incidence of aggressive prostate cancer in obese men who used statins," Dr. Blaylock tells Newsmax Health.

"The risk was related to the length of use: Those who used statins for more than five years had the highest incidence of aggressive cancer," he says.

"One well-conducted study noted that statins affect the type of immunity that's needed to suppress prostate cancer," says Dr. Blaylock. "And another study found that as long as you stay on statins, cell-mediated immunity, which is your most powerful immunity against cancer, is affected and increases the risk of developing a number of different types of cancer.

"In fact," says Dr. Blaylock, "statins are such powerful immune suppressors that transplant surgeons recommend that their transplant patients be on them to help prevent rejection of the transplants."

Why do studies researching the same topics sometimes have such different results? The answer could lie in the profitability of drugs. When a study is released that points out dangers of certain drugs, according to Dr. Blaylock, pharmaceutical companies will pay for articles to be written that say just the opposite: "There's a company that writes the articles based on a phony study and goes to university professors with impressive credentials and asks them to put their names on it.

"Many of them do, because the company is going to make sure the study ends up in a top journal, like the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA, and the doctor wants to be associated with that publication."

Practicing physicians don't have a clue this is going on, says Dr. Blaylock. "The article is beautifully written, in a trusted journal, and they're impressed," he says. "They walk around with the article in their pocket and say, 'Look. Here's a study with big names.'

"They trust it," says Dr. Blaylock. "And even though the New England Journal of Medicine has started a policy which states that a conflict of interest be disclosed, a lot of authors just ignore it. The journal doesn't enforce the policy, and in many cases, if you want to see the conflicts of interest, you have to click on another site to find it. A lot of doctors aren't going to do that."

The latest "statins decrease prostate cancer" study is "just another attempt by the pharmaceutical companies to get gullible doctors to write more prescriptions for statins," says Dr. Blaylock.