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Lifetime body size and prostate cancer risk in a population-based case–control study in Sweden

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Abstract

Purpose

The role of body size in prostate cancer etiology is unclear and potentially varies by age and disease subtype. We investigated whether body size in childhood and adulthood, including adult weight change, is related to total, low–intermediate-risk, high-risk, and fatal prostate cancer.

Methods

We used data on 1,499 incident prostate cancer cases and 1,118 population controls in Sweden. Body figure at age 10 was assessed by silhouette drawings. Adult body mass index (BMI) and weight change were based on self-reported height and weight between ages 20 and 70. We estimated odds ratios (ORs) with 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) by unconditional logistic regression.

Results

Height was positively associated with prostate cancer. Overweight/obesity in childhood was associated with a 54 % increased risk of dying from prostate cancer compared to normal weight, whereas a 27 % lower risk was seen in men who were moderately thin (drawing 2) in childhood (P trend = 0.01). Using BMI <22.5 as a reference, we observed inverse associations between BMI 22.5 to <25 at age 20 and all prostate cancer subtypes (ORs in the range 0.72–0.82), and between mean adult BMI 25 to <27.5 and low–intermediate-risk disease (OR 0.75, 95 % CI 0.55–1.02). Moderate adult weight gain increased the risk of disease in men with low BMI at start and in short men.

Conclusions

Our comprehensive life-course approach revealed no convincing associations between anthropometric measures and prostate cancer risk. However, we found some leads that deserve further investigation, particularly for early-life body size. Our study highlights the importance of the time window of exposure in prostate cancer development.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Swedish Cancer Society, Grant No. 110563. We wish to thank the participants in the CAPS study, as well as the data collectors, the urologists, and the Regional Cancer Registries.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, P.O. Box 281, SE-171 77, Stockholm, Sweden

    Elisabeth Möller, Hans-Olov Adami, Cecilia Lundholm, Rino Bellocco, Henrik Grönberg & Katarina Bälter

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Hans-Olov Adami & Lorelei A. Mucci

  3. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Lorelei A. Mucci

  4. Centre for Public Health Science, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Lorelei A. Mucci

  5. Department of Statistics, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Rino Bellocco

  6. School of Health and Medical Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

    Jan-Erik Johansson

  7. Department of Urology, Örebro University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden

    Jan-Erik Johansson

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  1. Elisabeth Möller
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  2. Hans-Olov Adami
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  4. Cecilia Lundholm
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Correspondence to Elisabeth Möller.

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Möller, E., Adami, HO., Mucci, L.A. et al. Lifetime body size and prostate cancer risk in a population-based case–control study in Sweden. Cancer Causes Control 24, 2143–2155 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-013-0291-0

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