Fat chance.

SWOG is jumping on the data transfer train to produce a new report on the impact of cardiovascular disease (CV) risk factors on breast cancer outcomes. They define CV risk factors as hypertension, diabetes, coronary artery disease, obesity, and absence of high cholesterol--more on this last one in a minute. They identified almost 1500 SWOG clinical trial enrollees over the age of 65 who could be linked with Medicare data. To no surprise, CV risk factors were associated with higher risk of CV events (HR 1.41) and death (HR 1.23). A little more interesting was that CV risk factors were also significantly associated with cancer progression (HR 1.12). Most interesting was that hypercholesterolemia was associated with a lower risk of death (HR 0.73) and even cancer progression (HR 0.80). TBL: High cholesterol and/or its treatment is associated with a lower chance of death after breast cancer treatment. | Hershman, J Clin Oncol 2018