Study Links Serum Calcium, Prostate Cancer Death

Tag : calcium

The results suggest the possibility of a new biomarker foraggressive prostate cancer, the researchers said. But one expertcautioned against reading too much into the study, given therelatively small number of individuals involved.
Gary Schwartz, of Wake Forest University Health Sciences inWinston-Salem, N.C., and Halcyon Skinner, of the University ofWisconsin, Madison, used data from the National Health andNutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and NHANES EpidemiologicFollow-up Study to determine the risk of prostate cancer among menwith relatively high, but still normal, blood serum calciumreadings.
Participants represented a random cross-section of Americanhouseholds, and they were first examined in the early 1970s. Atthat time, blood samples were drawn, and serum calcium levelsobtained. The participants were then monitored for an average ofalmost 10 years. Skinner and Schwartz asked, in this population,was there any correlation between baseline serum calcium and riskof prostate cancer later in life?
"It would be the equivalent of a high school guidance counselorlooking at SAT scores from students 20 years ago to see how [thescores] predict academic or business success," Schwartz explained.
In the study, 2,814 men between the ages of 24 and 77 at the timeof their initial blood draw were included in the analysis, yielding85 total cases and 25 fatal cases of prostate cancer over 46,188person-years of follow-up.
When these cases were segregated according to the individuals'serum calcium levels, the authors found that those whose serumcalcium readings during the initial blood draw fell at thehighest-third of the normal range (between 9.9 mg/dL and 10.5mg/dL) were about 2.7 times more likely to die of prostate cancerthan those with readings in the lowest or middle thirds (between9.0 mg/dL and 9.8 mg/dL).
That association held even adjusting for the most well-knownprostate cancer risk factors -- age, weight, race and familyhistory.
In contrast, no relationship was observed between serum calciumlevels and "incident" prostate cancer -- that is, with theoccurrence of new cases of prostate tumors in general.
The results were published in the September issue ofCancerEpidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, published by theAmerican Association for Cancer Research.
Dr. Durado Brooks, director of prostate & colorectal cancer atthe American Cancer Society in Atlanta, said, "There's been a lotof work around dietary calcium -- calcium supplements -- andprostate cancer risk, but I haven't seen much looking at serumcalcium levels and prostate cancer risk, so I think it's aninteresting angle to take on this issue."
Though he cautioned against "making too much about this," given thesmall number of affected individuals in the study, Brooks said theresearch should nevertheless "stimulate additional work in thisarea."