People taking statin drugs to stem the progression of Heart disease may be getting an extra benefit: protection from Colorectal cancer, researchers said on Wednesday.

The findings, published the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that taking cholesterol-lowering medicine cuts the risk of colon cancer by 47 percent.

But in an editorial in the Journal, Ernest Hawk and Jaye Viner of the National Cancer Institute said that without further research, “it is too early to recommend statins as chemopreventive agents against colorectal cancer” outside of a research setting.

The time window to do that research is closing, they warned. As statins are prescribed for more and more people with High cholesterol levels, the ability to do tests where volunteers get a placebo instead of the drug “may soon disappear.”

The latest results updated findings released in June of last year showing a 51 percent reduction in the colorectal cancer risk among people in northern Israel who had been taking statins, the most widely prescribed class of medicines in the United States, with annual sales of $12.5 billion.

While the June report assessed 3,342 patients, the new findings include data from 626 additional people.

The research team, led by Jenny Poyntner of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, estimated that 4,814 people would have to take statins regularly to prevent one case of colorectal cancer.

“In a high-risk population, such as those with a family history of Colorectal cancer, approximately half as many would need to be treated in order to prevent one case,” they said.

According to several other studies released in the past two months, statins also appear to cut the risk of prostate, pancreatic and throat cancers.

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