Greater weight tied to prostate cancer mortality

Categories: Prostate Cancer

High body mass index (BMI) does not increase the risk of prostate cancer, but BMI and weight gain are associated with a greater risk of mortality from the disease.

“This is a large study that shows a convincing dose-response association between obesity and adult weight gain and death from prostate cancer,” lead investigator Dr. Margaret E. Wright said.

Dr. Wright of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues came to this conclusion after studying data on 287,760 men taking part in a diet and health study.

After 5 years of follow-up, there were 9986 incident cases of prostate cancer and after 6 years of follow-up, there were 173 prostate cancer deaths, the researchers report in the February 15th issue of Cancer.

Higher baseline BMI was associated with significantly reduced total prostate cancer incidence. For men with a BMI of 40 or more, the relative risk was 0.67 compared that in men with a BMI of less than 25.

Conversely, the risk of prostate cancer mortality rose significantly with increasing BMI. This amounted to a relative risk of 1.25 for men with a BMI between 25 and 29.9, 1.46 for 30 to 34.9 and a relative risk of 2.12 for a BMI of 35 or more.

There was also a significant association between weight gain in adulthood and prostate cancer mortality. Again, this was unrelated to disease incidence.

“The growing prevalence of obesity in Western countries is alarming,” Dr. Wright said, “and reducing the risk of prostate cancer death is only one among many health reasons to maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise.”

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