According to a poster recently presented at a South-Eastern Section meeting of the American Urology Association, there is a significant and independent relationship between male height and risk for biochemical recurrence after radical surgery as a treatment for prostate cancer.
The actual poster presented by Singh et al. can be reviewed in detail on the Urology Today web site (but you have to register to be able to see it).
Basically, the authors carried out a detailed, retrospective review of data from 1,559 patients who were treated by radical prostatectomy at Duke University medical center between 2005 and 2009 and whose data were all available in the Duke Prostate Center database. The team from Duke has previously shown that increasing height is a risk factor for aggressive (i.e., clinically significant) forms of prostate cancer. In this study they were focused on whether increasing height was also a risk factor for recurrence after treatment.
Here are the key findings:
- Complete and relevant data were available for 1,013/1,559 patients (65.0 percent)
- The average (mean) height of these 1,013 men was 178 ± 18 cm (about 70 ± 7 inches).
- On crude analysis, height had a small positive trend for increased risk of biochemical recurrence post-surgery (hazard ratio [HR] =1.03, p = 0.072).
- After careful, adjustment for potential pathological co-founders, height was still found to be significantly associated with increased risk for biochemical failure (HR = 1.034, p = 0.032).
- Other independent predictors of biochemical recurrence (as one might expect) were PSA level, high-grade Gleason scores, positive surgical margins, and seminal vesicle invasion (p ≤ 0.006).
- There was no significant relationship between height and any single adverse pathological outcome based on multivariate analysis.
Singh et al. conclude that, “In the current study, height was a significant risk factor for biochemical failure.” They note that, for each additional centimeter difference in height, the relative risk for biochemical recurrence goes up by 3.4 percent.
Filed under: Diagnosis, Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Risk, Treatment Tagged: | Height, recurrence, risk, surgery
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Classic example of useless data. Hard to believe this even made it to a poster session.
Dear Bob:
With respect, that is not actually, necessarily, the case at all. It may help us to develop drugs that can better treat progressive forms of prostate cancer with fewer side effects than current agents.
Not really a surprise as height is listed as a risk factor for prostate cancer to begin with.
I totally agree with Sitemaster (see above), but understand where Bob may be coming from. Like me, he may be a prostate cancer patient looking for “actionable” information. But more work needs to be done here, as Sitemaster suggests. Perhaps there’s a relationship between human growth hormone levels and prostate cancer recurrence. It’s just one of many intriguing possibilities. March on!
I’d seen another study that had a similar finding for prostate cancer:
I think it may be useful to explore the source of the association further. Several studies have suggested that somatostatin, which mitigates growth hormone, may be beneficial in the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).
Others have noticed the epidemiological association to cow’s milk intake. Is the high consumption of milk in the Western diet, which became possible with refrigeration, responsible for both the greater expression of “height genes” and the greater incidence of prostate cancer during the 20th century (even before the PSA era)? In another article, the authors hypothesize that increased consumption of cow’s milk stimulates the transport of leucine into prostate cells, which activates a mTORC1 gene that stimulates cell proliferation leading to carcinogenesis. It also stimulates another growth factor, IGF1, that has been implicated in prostate cancer. Interestingly, blocking mTOR (with everolimus, for example) and inhibiting IGF1 (with metformin or somatostatin, for example) have both been shown to slow the growth of prostate cancer.
For now, these are only hypotheses, but I’m glad that such studies as these suggest new avenues for exploration.
At 6’5″ I barely fit on the table at M. D. Anderson’s proton center pencil beam table in gantry #3. Wrapped up 39 treatments a week ago Friday. Now this? The good news just won’t stop. :o)
Press on and never give up!
Gleason 8/T1c