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Physical activity and body mass index as predictors of prostate cancer risk

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Abstract

Purpose

Physical activity and body mass index (BMI) are involved in prostate cancer etiology; possible biologic mechanisms include their effects on hormonal levels. Our aim was to investigate the relationship between physical activity, obesity, and prostate cancer.

Methods

We followed a cohort of 13,109 Swedish men for 13 years and investigated the association of self-reported physical activity and BMI at baseline with prostate cancer incidence. We further analyzed whether BMI could modulate effects of physical activity. Occupational, recreational, and total physical activity were analyzed in relation to overall, localized, and advanced prostate cancer.

Results

During the study follow-up, we observed a total of 904 cases of prostate cancer (429 localized, 407 advanced, and 68 unclassified). High levels of occupational physical activity were associated with a nonsignificantly decreased risk of overall (HR 0.81, 95 % CI 0.61–1.07), localized (HR 0.75, 95 % CI 0.51–1.12), and advanced (HR 0.85, 95 % CI 0.55–1.31) prostate cancer. We found no association between high BMI and risk of prostate cancer incidence: We observed, however, a significant interaction between BMI and leisure physical activity.

Conclusion

No association was confirmed between total physical activity and localized or advanced prostate cancer. The highest, relative to the lowest, level of occupational physical activity tended to be linked to a lower risk of prostate cancer, with a suggested dose–response relationship. We found no association between high BMI and risk of prostate cancer incidence; however, our analyses suggested an interaction between BMI and physical activity during recreational time that merits further investigation in future studies.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express sincere gratitude to the Swedish Cancer Society and volunteers who worked with the National March. Furthermore, the authors thank Andrea Discacciati, Stephanie Bonn, Hatef Darabi, and Andrea Ganna for their useful comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by ICA AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, the Swedish Cancer Society (Grant CAN 2012/591), Karolinska Institutet Distinguished Professor Award (H-OA Grant 2368/10-221), Minister of University and Research, Italy (RB Grant PRIN 2009 X8YCBN), and the regional agreement on medical training and clinical research between Stockholm County Council and Karolinska Institutet (YTL). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standard

This study was approved by Regional Ethics Review Board at the Karolinska Institutet.

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Correspondence to Alessandra Grotta.

Additional information

Rino Bellocco and Ylva Trolle Lagerros have contributed equally to the work and are listed alphabetically.

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Grotta, A., Bottai, M., Adami, HO. et al. Physical activity and body mass index as predictors of prostate cancer risk. World J Urol 33, 1495–1502 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-014-1464-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-014-1464-5

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