Genetic meta-analysis of cancer diagnosis following statin use identifies new associations and implicates human leukocyte antigen (HLA) in women.

We sought to perform a genomic evaluation of the risk of incident cancer in statin users, free of cancer at study entry. Patients who previously participated in two phase IV trials (TNT and IDEAL) with genetic data were used (npooled = 11,196). A GWAS meta-analysis using Cox modeling for the prediction of incident cancer was conducted in the pooled cohort and sex-stratified. rs13210472 (near HLA-DOA gene) was associated with higher risk of incident cancer amongst women with prevalent coronary artery disease (CAD) taking statins (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.66, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.88-3.76, P = 3.5 × 10-8). Using the UK Biobank and focusing exclusively on women statin users with CAD (nfemale = 2952), rs13210472 remained significantly associated with incident cancer (HR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.14-2.56, P = 9.0 × 10-3). The association was not observed in non-statin users. In this genetic meta-analysis, we have identified a variant in women statin users with prevalent CAD that was associated with incident cancer, possibly implicating the human leukocyte antigen pathway.