High cholesterol doubles prostate cancer risk

Prostate Cancer :: High cholesterol doubles prostate cancer risk

A new study has found that there is indeed a direct link between high cholesterol levels and prostate cancer, and that men with prostate cancer were around 50 percent more likely to have had high cholesterol levels.

The study, by a team of Italian scientists led by Dr Francesca Bravi, an epidemiologist from the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Milan, was based on data collected from a case-control study carried out in four Italian areas between 1991 and 2002, involving 1,294 men under age 75 with prostate cancer and 1,451 matched controls admitted to the same hospitals with acute non-cancerous conditions.

Dr Bravi said that though the study relied on the participants’ self-reported medical conditions, they had found that that the relationship between prostate cancer and high cholesterol appears to be a real one.

"Although the study relied on participants’ self-reported medical conditions, the absence of an association between prostate cancer and about 10 other medical conditions we investigated indicates that the relationship we found between prostate cancer and high cholesterol appears to be a real one,” she said.

Dr Bravi said that the study had found that men with prostate cancer were around 50 percent more likely to have had high cholesterol levels.

“We found that, after allowing for any potential confounding factors, men with prostate cancer were around 50% more likely to have had high cholesterol levels than our non-prostate cancer controls,” she said.

“The association was somewhat stronger for men whose high cholesterol levels had been diagnosed before they were 50 and for men over 65, where there was an 80% greater likelihood of high cholesterol levels,” she added.

The study also found that prostate cancer patients were 26 percent more likely to have suffered from gallstones, which are often related to high cholesterol levels.

“We also found that prostate cancer patients were 26% more likely to have suffered from gallstones than our controls, with an apparently higher relationship in thinner men. Although that figure was not statistically significant, gallstones are often related to high cholesterol levels,” she said.

The study was published on-line on 12 April in Annals of Oncology.