Dairy products, calcium, and prostate cancer risk in the Physicians' Health Study

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

 

Interesting new study which needs to be investigated further. What does seem

clear is a tie-in with low Vit D and

prostate cancer.

 

While elevated calcium intake may lower the Vit D derivative 125D due to higher

calcium absorption needing less 125D to

do the absorption, there is still a need for calcium and the real factor may be

a lack of Vit D generation from the sun

or dietary factors.

 

Bottom line seems to be don't overdose on calcium, eat more Vit D rich foods and

take in some sun.

 

Thanks to Blake Graham on the VegScience list for finding this.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list_uids=1\

1566656 & dopt=Abstract

Am J Clin Nutr 2001 Oct;74(4):549-54 Books

Dairy products, calcium, and prostate cancer risk in the Physicians' Health

Study.

Chan JM, Stampfer MJ, Ma J, Gann PH, Gaziano JM, Giovannucci EL.

Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA.

june.chan

 

BACKGROUND:

A high calcium intake, mainly from dairy products, may increase prostate cancer

risk by lowering concentrations of

1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) [1,25(OH)(2)D(3)], 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)(2)D(3) concentrations than did those

consuming < or =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 < or =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 < or =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.

 

PMID: 11566656 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 

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Good Health & Long Life,

Greg Watson,

gowatson