Statin has been proposed to have a capacity to reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer, while the obtained results are notconsistent. To gain a clearer picture of the relationship between statin use and pancreatic cancer, the present meta-analysis took into consideration data from eight cohort studies, ten case-control studies and three RCTs.We searched all relevant studies on the effect of statin use on the risk of pancreatic cancer using PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane library database from inception to July 30, 2018. The following search terms were used: (1) statin (“statins”, “statin”, “3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme-A reductase inhibitors”, “atorvastatin”, “cerivastatin”, “fluvastatin”, “lovastatin”, “pravastatin”, “rosuvastatin”, “simvastatin”); (2) pancreatic cancer (“cancer”, “neoplasm”, “malignancy”). We manually examined the references of the relevant articles and reviews to identify additional studies. A total of 21studies, published between 2001 and July 2018 and involving 1 148 680 cases and 2 177 842 controls, fulfilled the selection criteria. The pooled results revealed a significant relationship between statin use andpancreatic cancer risk (OR = 0.84, 95% CI 0.72–0.98, P = 0.000, I2= 84.3%). However, lipophilic statins (OR = 1.07, 95% CI 0.97–1.18,P = 0.651, I2= 0.0%) had no significant effect on the risk of pancreatic cancer. In contrast, short-term statin use (OR = 0.72, 95% CI 0.54–0.96, P = 0.000, I2= 80.1%) and long-term statin use (OR = 0.70, 95% CI 0.54–0.92, P = 0.000, I2= 79.8%)significantly reduced pancreatic cancer risk. Notably, the high heterogeneity among the selected studies was eliminated by excluding the three studies that focused on restricted populations. Statin could significantly reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer.
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