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Dietary Risk Factors associated with incidence of Prostate Cancer

Newswise — June Chan from UCSF presented on Nutritional Epidemiology of Prostate Cancer. In a population migration study, low-risk CaP populations moving to a high-risk area shifted to a higher risk profile.

Chinese men in China had a CaP risk of 3/100,000, but after moving to the US this increased to 100-120/100,000 by three generations later. This supports the notion that epigenetic events contribute to CaP risk.

Dietary risk factors that increase risk of CaP include foods high in calcium (and possibly processed foods and red meats) and foods that decrease risk include foods rich in lycopene and selenium (and possibly legumes, vegetables, Vit E, antioxidants, fish and marine n-3 fatty acids).

However, from an epidemiologic standpoint there are interpretation caveats that can influence the presumed risk factors, Chan stated.

CaP heterogeneity will influence outcomes and one must consider that incidence vs. progression vs. mortality are carefully defined in studies. Among incident cases, one must separate between aggressive vs. non-aggressive disease.

The influence of PSA screening and other interactions must also be taken into account. For example, CaP heterogeneity impacts the incidence percentage of high-risk vs. low-risk CaP among those taking either lycopene based foods or calcium.

Another example is the interaction of antioxidant intake and the MnSOD genotype, showing the influence of genotype on nutrition that can confound some studies.

In the CaPSURE database, diet and CaP progression were analyzed by multivariate analysis. Most patients included in her analysis had low or intermediate risk CaP (70% and 25%, respectively). A protective effect of vegetables was noted, but not for fish.