Copyright © Prostate Cancer International, Inc. The following article was reproduced with permission from The "New" Prostate Cancer InfoLink on 11/24/2009. All rights reserved. http://prostatecancerinfolink.net

Over the years a variety of factors have suggested an association between diet and risk for prostate cancer — with a particular emphasis on the “dangers” of larger quantities of things like red meat, meat fats, and milk-based products in the diet. This presumed association has also been supported by the well-known fact that, historically, Japanese men (whose domestic diet was low in meat and fats and high in soy, rice, and fish) had a relatively low risk for prostate cancer, but if they moved from Japan to America their risk appeared to increase rapidly to be similar to that of the average American male. It was assumed that this was very likely because of significant changes in diet associated with the change in place of residence. It is also notable that as the amount of meat and milk-based products in the diet of domestic Japanese has increased over the past 20 years, there has been an apparent increase in the risk of prostate cancer.

Muller et al. at the University of Melbourne have now conducted a prospective investigation of associations between dietary patterns and prostate cancer risk in 14,627 men of ages 34 to 75 years for an average of 13.6 years.

Over the follow-up period, the authors report 1,018 incident prostate cancers in these 14,627 men who were participating in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study.

The bottom line to what is a complex epidemiological and statistical analysis is that Muller et al. were unable to identify any association between any dietary pattern and overall risk for prostate cancer. Specifically, the analysis also did not show any association between any dietary pattern and such factors as cancer aggressiveness, Gleason score, or age at diagnosis.

All that we can really conclude from this study was that in this specific population of men participating in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study (recruited well over 10 years ago), it was not possible to demonstrate an association between diet and risk for prostate cancer.

The question that continues to stand out for The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink is whether there are environmental impacts (specifically including diet) that occur much earlier in life that have significant impact on our risks for prostate cancer as we age. We know that all sorts of things that we do or which are done to us in the first decade of life can have profound impact on us as we move into and through adulthood. It seems entirely reasonable to The “New” Prostate Cancer InfoLink that it may be things that happen very early in our lives that may predispose some proportion of every specific population to risk for prostate cancer — but then how do we explain the “Japanese immigration” effect?