 From
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
Vol. 74, No. 4, 549-554, October 2001
Original Research Communication
|
Dairy products, calcium, and prostate cancer risk in the Physicians' Health
Study1,2,3
June M Chan, Meir J Stampfer, Jing Ma,
Peter H Gann, J Michael Gaziano and Edward L Giovannucci
1 From the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology,
Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; the Channing Laboratory, the Department
of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston;
the Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University Medical School,
Chicago; the Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital,
Boston; and Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology and Information Center, VA Boston
Health Care System.
Background: A high calcium intake, mainly from dairy products,
may increase prostate cancer risk by lowering concentrations of
1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25(OH)2D3], a hormone
thought to protect against prostate cancer. The results of epidemiologic
studies of this hypothesis are inconclusive.
Objective: We investigated the association between dairy product
and calcium intakes and prostate cancer risk in the Physicians' Health
Study, a cohort of male US physicians.
Design: At baseline, the men answered abbreviated dietary questionnaires.
During 11 y of follow-up, we documented 1012 incident cases of
prostate cancer among 20885 men. We estimated dairy calcium intake
on the basis of consumption of 5 major dairy products and used logistic
regression to estimate relative risk.
Results: At baseline, men who consumed >600 mg Ca/d from skim
milk had lower plasma 1,25(OH)2D3 concentrations than
did those consuming  150
mg Ca/d [71 compared with 85 pmol/L (30.06 compared with 35.64 pg/mL);
P = 0.005]. Compared with men consuming 0.5
daily servings of dairy products, those consuming >2.5 servings had
a multivariate relative risk of prostate cancer of 1.34 (95% CI:
1.04, 1.71) after adjustment for baseline age, body mass index, smoking,
exercise, and randomized treatment assignment in the original placebo-controlled
trial. Compared with men consuming 150
mg Ca/d from dairy products, men consuming >600 mg/d had a 32%
higher risk of prostate cancer (95% CI: 1.08, 1.63).
Conclusions:
These results support the hypothesis that dairy products and calcium
are associated with a greater risk of prostate cancer.
Key Words: Dairy products • calcium • prostate cancer • vitamin D •
diet • Physicians' Health Study • 1 • 25-dihydroxyvitamin D3
Back
to VegSource.com
|
Full Text
of this Article