Role of Statin on the Gastric Inflammation in Patients at High Risk of Gastric Cancer

Statins are commonly used as cholesterol-lowering medications and have shown effectiveness in the primary and secondary prevention of heart attack and stroke. In addition, several recent studies of human cancer cell lines and animal tumor models indicate that statins may have chemopreventive properties through the arresting of cell-cycle progression. The chemopreventive effect of statins was demonstrated in some kind of human tumors including colorectal cancer. In addition, recent one large epidemiologic study showed that statins decreased risk of gastric cancer. On the other hands, it has been well known that Helicobacter pylori infection induces gastric atrophy and intestinal metaplasia, which are premalignant lesions of gastric cancer. Progression of these premalignant lesions could be limited by H. pylori eradication. In addition, a recent double blind randomization study revealed that simvastatin as adjuvant to standard therapy improves significantly the H. pylori eradication rate. Therefore, investigators conjecture that statins may have an adjuvant role for inhibition of gastric carcinogenesis. investigators aim to evaluate the role of statins in gastric carcinogenesis by observing the changes of gastric inflammation under statins.