A prospective study of intake of fish and marine fatty acids and prostate cancer.

Experimental studies suggest that marine fatty acids have an antitumor effect on prostate tumor cells. The aim of this study was to investigate whether high consumption of fish and marine fatty acids reduces the risk of prostate cancer in humans. We followed 47882 men participating in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Dietary intake was assessed in 1986, 1990, and 1994, using a validated food frequency questionnaire. During 12 years of follow-up, 2482 cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed, of which 617 were diagnosed as advanced prostate cancer including 278 metastatic prostate cancers. Eating fish more than three times per week was associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer, and the strongest association was for metastatic cancer (multivariate relative risk, 0.56; 95% confidence interval, 0.37-0.86, compared with infrequent consumption, i.e., less than twice per month). Intake of marine fatty acids from food showed a similar but weaker association. Each additional daily intake of 0.5 g of marine fatty acid from food was associated with a 24% decreased risk of metastatic cancer. We found that men with high consumption of fish had a lower risk of prostate cancer, especially for metastatic cancer. Marine fatty acids may account for part of the effect, but other factors in fish may also play a role.

[1]  S. Wacholder,et al.  Diet, tobacco use, and fatal prostate cancer: results from the Lutheran Brotherhood Cohort Study. , 1990, Cancer research.

[2]  T. Byers,et al.  The diet of Alaska Native adults: 1987-1988. , 1992, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[3]  J. Redfern,et al.  Effect of prostaglandin F3α on gastric mucosal injury by ethanol in rats: comparison with prostaglandin F2α , 1989 .

[4]  D. Rose,et al.  Effects of dietary fatty acids on DU145 human prostate cancer cell growth in athymic nude mice. , 1997, Nutrition and cancer.

[5]  A. Wolk,et al.  Fatty fish consumption and risk of prostate cancer , 2001, The Lancet.

[6]  S. Liao,et al.  Inhibition of steroid 5 alpha-reductase by specific aliphatic unsaturated fatty acids. , 1992, The Biochemical journal.

[7]  J. Hisnanick,et al.  Cancer incidence among American Indians and Alaska Natives, 1980 through 1987. , 1993, American journal of public health.

[8]  A. Lanier,et al.  Cancer in Alaskan Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, 1969-83: implications for etiology and control. , 1989, Public health reports.

[9]  E. di Salle,et al.  Effect of early treatment of prostate cancer with the 5α‐reductase inhibitor turosteride in Dunning R3327 prostatic carcinoma in rats , 1998, The Prostate.

[10]  C. Myers,et al.  Arachidonic acid stimulates prostate cancer cell growth: critical role of 5-lipoxygenase. , 1997, Biochemical and biophysical research communications.

[11]  D. Rose,et al.  Effects of fatty acids and eicosanoid synthesis inhibitors on the growth of two human prostate cancer cell lines , 1991, The Prostate.

[12]  D. Rose,et al.  Effects of dietary fatty acids on breast and prostate cancers: evidence from in vitro experiments and animal studies. , 1997, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[13]  C. la Vecchia,et al.  Fish consumption and cancer risk. , 1999, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[14]  Bernhard O. Palsson,et al.  Cancer cell lines , 1999 .

[15]  D. Bishop,et al.  A case-control study of diet and prostate cancer. , 1997, British Journal of Cancer.

[16]  H. Adami,et al.  Early life risk factors for prostate cancer: a population-based case-control study in Sweden. , 1995, Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology.

[17]  D Spiegelman,et al.  Dietary fat and coronary heart disease: a comparison of approaches for adjusting for total energy intake and modeling repeated dietary measurements. , 1999, American journal of epidemiology.

[18]  G A Colditz,et al.  Reproducibility and validity of an expanded self-administered semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire among male health professionals. , 1992, American journal of epidemiology.

[19]  M. Nakao,et al.  Epidemiological study of prostatic cancer by matched‐pair analysis , 1986, The Prostate.

[20]  D Feskanich,et al.  Reproducibility and validity of food intake measurements from a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire. , 1993, Journal of the American Dietetic Association.