Association of statin use on survival outcomes of patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer in the APHINITY trial.

Purpose: There is evidence that statins might improve the outcome of patients with breast cancer. The role of statins in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer is unknown. Therefore, we explored the association between statin use and survival outcomes in early HER2-positive breast cancer patients in the phase III APHINITY trial (adjuvant pertuzumab/trastuzumab).

Methods: All patients (intent-to-treat population, n = 4804) were included (6.2 years median follow-up database). The primary objective was to investigate the association of statin use on invasive disease-free survival (IDFS), distant relapse-free interval (DRFI), and overall survival (OS). Patients who received statins at baseline, or started statins within 1 year from randomization were considered statin users. Survival curves were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. We used a Cox proportional hazards model for multivariate analysis.

Results: Overall, 423 (8.8%) patients were classified as statin users. They were older, more often postmenopausal, had a higher body mass index, more often diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease and hyperlipidemia, had smaller sized tumors, were treated more often with breast conserving surgery, and less often with anthracycline-containing regimens. Overall, 508 IDFS events (12.8% among statin users and 10.4% among non-statin users) and 272 deaths (8.5% and 5.4%, respectively) occurred. In multivariate analysis, statin use was not associated with IDFS (HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.80-1.52), DRFI (HR, 1.21; 95% CI, 0.81-1.81) nor OS (HR, 1.16; 95% CI, 0.78-1.73).

Conclusion: In APHINITY, statin use was not associated with improved survival outcomes. These results must be interpreted with caution due to the exploratory nature of the analysis and the associated limitations.