ArticleCancer medicine2025
Statin Drugs Are Associated With Response to Immune Checkpoint Blockade in Recurrent/Metastatic Head and Neck Cancer.
Article in Cancer medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Survival and response outcomes in patients with recurrent/metastatic head and neck cancer treated with opioids and statins: an exploratory pilot study.Translational cancer research · 2026Article
- Statins in the context of precision cancer medicine: important factors to consider.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2025Review
- Treatment Resistant Persister Cells Exploit Macrophage Lipid Metabolism to Sustain Glioblastoma Growth.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Administration of statins is correlated with favourable prognosis in lung cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundStatin drugs, frequently used to treat hyperlipidemia, are associated with improved survival outcomes in multiple solid tumor types, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Preclinical studies suggest that manipulation of cholesterol with statins and other agents can enhance the function of multiple components involved in anti-tumor immune responses. Retrospective studies in other solid tumor types suggest that statin therapy is associated with improved responses to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), but this has not yet been investigated in HNSCC.
methodsPharmacy records were searched for patients with recurrent/metastatic HNSCC treated at our institution with pembrolizumab or nivolumab from 2015 to 2022. Patients who received less than 3 doses of ICB were excluded. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine the association between statin use and objective response, progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).
resultsA total of 158 patients were included. Statins were significantly associated with objective response; the strongest associations were seen with rosuvastatin and lovastatin. On multivariate analyses, statins were independently associated with objective response but not with PFS or OS.
conclusionsStatin therapy appears to be an independent predictor of response to ICB in HNSCC. Larger, prospective studies are needed to determine whether specific statin drugs can improve survival outcomes in ICB-treated patients.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.