As opposed to the previous studies, a new study has claimed that the cholesterol lowering drug statins taken by postmenopausal women don't cut the risk for colorectal cancer.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by Dr. Michael S. Simon, a professor of oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit. The findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's ninth annual Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference in Philadelphia.

The researchers analyzed the data on 159,219 postmenopausal women collected from the Woman's Health Initiative study. The women were studied for more than a decade. There were detected 2,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 7.6% of the women had been taking statins.

"The upshot was there was no significant difference in colorectal cancer risk between statin users and nonusers", said Simon.

At the conference on Monday, Simon expressed that many previous studies have associated the use of stains in reducing the risk of colorectal cancer a little, while some other studies discovered no connection between the two. So, he called for more research on the benefit of statins for preventing colorectal cancer.

Another study led by Dr. Andrea De Censi, Director of the medical oncology unit at Galliera Hospital in Genoa, Italpresented at the press conference brought out that the gout drug allopurinolcan prove effective in treating colorectal cancer.