If you ask men about their top 5 health fears, high cholesterol and prostate cancer will probably be on that list.

These 2 health issues shouldn’t be a worry for most men.

High cholesterol does not cause disease – although it can indicate underlying health problems.

Forcing cholesterol levels down with statin treatments doesn't improve outcomes because cholesterol isn’t the problem.

Statin treatments can also have very troublesome side effects.

And in the case of prostate cancer, it’s massively overdiagnosed and massively over treated.

But there are some rare cases of “high-grade” prostate cancer which can be worrying.

A number of studies have shown that taking statins increases the risk of being diagnosed with high-grade prostate cancers.

The human research was carried out at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings are published in the European Journal of Cancer. (PMID: 25727881)

A number of different treatments have been proposed to alter prostate cancer risk.

This study was designed to analyze some large datasets to see if the researchers could find any relationship.

The researchers used data from Swedish public health records.

In the dataset, over 185,000 Swedish men had presented for a PSA test.

The PSA is a blood test which looks at a protein related to inflammation of the prostate.

Of these men, a further 18,500 men’s PSA test results identified them (probably incorrectly) as at risk of having prostate cancer…

…so they went for a prostate biopsy.

The PSA test identifies many men who are not at risk of having prostate cancer as targets for further investigation.

The prostate biopsy can cause infection of the area – leading to hospitalization and other serious repercussions.

The prostate biopsy samples were analyzed in a standardized way.

Researchers look at them under a microscope to see if there’s any changes in the growth of prostate cells which could indicate cancer.

These biopsies analysis are then rated on something called a Gleason scale.

The samples which look more cancerous receive a higher score.

Most diagnosed prostate cancers are extremely slow-growing.

Men with these diagnoses will almost certainly die of something else if the cancer is untreated.

But for some men, men with a high Gleason score, prostate cancer can sometimes be a problem.

The study found that some treatments like aspirin were associated with a slightly lower PSA score.

Statin treatments were associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer diagnosis.

Low-grade prostate cancer is usually completely harmless…

But the diagnosis itself can lead to some very harmful and unnecessary treatments.

“Men using statins had a 16% increased risk of prostate cancer diagnosis.”

But most importantly, statin treatments are associated with a significantly higher risk of high-grade prostate cancer…

The rare, aggressive prostate cancer which can be a health risk in itself.

“Men using statins had a 25% increased risk of high grade prostate cancer.”

A significant increase in the risk of high-grade prostate cancer can be added to the list of problems caused by statin treatments.

Statins are used to force down blood cholesterol levels. Cholesterol has been associated with cardiovascular and other diseases.

But cholesterol has never been shown to be a cause of these diseases.

Quite the opposite – cholesterol is usually a protective factor in the context of another health problem.

Low thyroid hormones and low-grade bacterial infection are common causes of high cholesterol.

These underlying health problems are the cause of cardiovascular disease and other health problems which are linked to cholesterol.

The increase in prostate cancer diagnosis and high-grade prostate cancer in statin users underlines the importance of properly assessing the causes for high cholesterol…

…rather than simply treating the symptom by beating down cholesterol levels with statins.

-Matt Cook

The first point I want to make, then emphasize, then re-emphasize, is that there is no ‘the’ cause of cardiovascular disease. By which I mean that there is not, and never has been, any one single factor that can be considered to be ‘the’ cause. Instead, there are many. They can work by themselves or combine with others.

So you can say that, for example, diabetes is ‘a’ cause of cardiovascular disease. But you cannot say that it is ‘the’ cause. Yes ‘a’ cause but not ‘the’ cause. This is not purely semantics. Whilst the difference may seem subtle, it is critical. A table, or the table. A man, or the man. An answer, or the answer.

If there is no ‘the’ cause, what does this mean in practice? It means that many different things, or factors, or whatever term you use to describe them, can lead to exactly the same disease.