Anti-adhesion mucins have proven to play an important part in the biology of several types of cancer. Therefore, we test the hypothesis that altered expression of MUC-1 is associated with prostate ...cancer progression. We retrieved archival tumour tissue from a population-based cohort of 195 men with localised prostate cancer (T1a-b, Nx, M0) that has been followed for up to 20 years with watchful waiting. Semi-automated, quantitative immunohistochemistry was undertaken to evaluate MUC-1 expression. We modelled prostate cancer-specific death as a function of MUC-1 levels accounting for age, Gleason grade and tumour extent, and calculated age-adjusted and multivariate adjusted hazard ratios (HR). Men that had tumours with an MUC-intensity lower or higher than normal tissue had a higher risk of dying in prostate cancer, independent of tumour extent and Gleason score (HR 5.1 and 4.5, respectively). Adjustment for Gleason grade and tumour stage did not alter the results. Men with a Gleason score > or =7 and MUC-1 deviating from the normal had a 17 (RR=17.1 95% confidence interval=2.3-128) times higher risk to die in prostate cancer compared with men with Gleason score <7 and normal MUC-1 intensity. In summary, our data show that MUC-1 is an independent prognostic marker for prostate cancer death.
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Background: The circadian rhythm regulates diverse biologic pathways including tumor oncogenes, metabolism, and cell proliferation. Dysregulation of the circadian rhythm arises from ...faulty input signals such as exposure to light at night, variability in core circadian rhythm genes, and variation in outputs that regulate circadian behavior including melatonin. There is compelling biologic rationale, but little human data, on circadian dysrhythm and advanced prostate cancer. Methods: We undertook an integrative molecular epidemiology study of circadian dysrhythm and advanced prostate cancer among men in the Icelandic AGES-Reykjavik cohort and the U.S. Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which allowed integration of questionnaire data, biorepositories, and long-term follow-up. We characterized circadian dysrhythm using complimentary approaches: information on sleep problems from questionnaires, prediagnostic melatonin (6-sulfatoxymelatonin) measured on first morning void urine samples, and genetic variation across twelve circadian clock genes. We used multivariable regression models to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of associations with advanced prostate cancer, adjusted for potential confounders. Results: Twenty percent of men reported sleep problems. Men who had trouble falling asleep (RR = 2.1; 95% CI 0.7-6.2) and staying asleep (RR=3.2, 95% CI 1.1-9.7) had an increased risk of developing advanced prostate cancer. Men with sleep problems had significantly lower melatonin levels compared to those without. Low melatonin levels were associated with a statistically significant 4-fold higher risk of advanced prostate cancer compared to those with high levels (95% CI: 1.25-10.0). Variant alleles in two SNPs in cryptochrome (CRY1), involved in generating and maintaining circadian rhythms, were significantly associated with risk of advanced prostate cancer in both cohorts, with a gene-level p-value<0.01. Conclusions: Our results suggest there are multiple nodes in the circadian rhythm that are associated with an increased risk of advanced prostate cancer. As such, there is the potential for complimentary strategies to target circadian disruption and reduce the risk of advanced prostate cancer.
Disruption of the circadian system has been hypothesized to increase cancer risk, either due to direct disruption of the molecular machinery generating circadian rhythms or due to disruption of ...parameters controlled by the clock such as melatonin levels or sleep duration. This hypothesis has been studied in hormone-dependent cancers among women, but data are sparse regarding potential effects of circadian disruption on the risk of prostate cancer. This review systematically examines available data evaluating the effects of light at night, sleep patterns, and night shift work on prostate cancer risk.
Objective: To evaluate the feasibility and reliability of (1) identifying Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) membership by ascertaining self-reported health plan name in a telephone survey and (2) ...using external information to determine whether the plan was an HMO. Methods: Respondents to the 1999-2001 Massachusetts Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the 1999 Massachusetts Colorectal Cancer (CRC) survey were asked to name their health plan. The authors used information from external sources to classify the plan as an HMO or a non-HMO. Test-retest reliability of reported plan name was examined overall, by demographic characteristics, and by health plan name. Reliability of HMO classification was tested with the kappa statistic. Results: More than 88 percent of respondents with commercial health insurance provided their health plan name; 84 percent reported a plan that could be assigned as either an HMO or a non-HMO. The percentage whose HMO status could be assigned differed by demographic characteristics. Among those assigned, the distribution of specific HMOs among survey respondents was similar to the distribution reported by the Massachusetts Division of Insurance. In a subsample, 78 percent reported the same health plan during a follow-up interview. Agreement was higher for men, and differed according to the plan reported at the first time point. Kappa for HMO classification from health plan name was 0.87. Conclusions: Self-report of health plan name is a feasible and reliable method to ascertain health insurance information in a telephone interview.
Although dietary fat has been associated with prostate cancer risk, the association between specific fatty acids and prostate cancer survival remains unclear. Dietary intake of 14 fatty acids was ...analyzed in a population-based cohort of 525 Swedish men with prostate cancer in Oerebro County (1989-1994). Multivariable hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for time to prostate cancer death by quartile and per standard deviation increase in intake were estimated by Cox proportional hazards regression. Additional models examined the association by stage at diagnosis (localized: T0-T2/M0; advanced: T0-T4/M1, T3-T4/M0). Among all men, those with the highest omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid and total marine fatty acid intakes were 40% less likely to die from prostate cancer (P sub(trend) = 0.05 and 0.04, respectively). Among men with localized prostate cancer, hazard ratios of 2.07 (95% confidence interval: 0.93, 4.59; P sub(trend) = 0.03) for elevated total fat, 2.39 (95% confidence interval: 1.06, 5.38) for saturated myristic acid, and 2.88 (95% confidence interval: 1.24, 6.67) for shorter chain (C4-C10) fatty acid intakes demonstrated increased risk for disease-specific mortality for the highest quartile compared with the lowest quartile. This study suggests that high intake of total fat and certain saturated fatty acids may worsen prostate cancer survival, particularly among men with localized disease. In contrast, high marine omega-3 fatty acid intake may improve disease-specific survival for all men.
The article by Miquel Porta and his colleagues 1 indicating that pancreatic cancer cases without activating mutations in the K-ras gene drank significantly less coffee than cases with a mutation and ...the accompanying editorial by Paolo Vineis 2 are both important. The study by Porta and his colleagues has a considerable advantage over conventional case-control studies-it is less likely to have suffered from substantial selection or information bias. 3 Unless chance has operated in a sinister way, you have to accept that there is indeed a positive association between coffee intake and K-ras mutations among patients with pancreatic cancer.
First-born and second-born children are exposed to common infections after enrollment at school, whereas later-born children are exposed to these infections earlier through their older siblings. We ...have evaluated whether birth order is a risk factor for hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related, hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related, and apparently virus-unrelated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in a large case-control study that included 333 HCC cases and 632 controls. In comparison with controls who were carriers of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), HBsAg-positive HCC cases were more likely to have been later-born children (odds ratio per increase in birth order = 2.0; 95% confidence interval = 1.2-3.6). There was no such evidence for anti-HCV-positive cases compared with anti-HCV-positive controls or for virus-negative HCC cases compared with virus-negative controls. We conclude that early infection with HBV increases the risk of HBV carriers to develop HCC, over and beyond its role in facilitating the establishment of a carrier state.
The identification of recurrent founder variants in cancer predisposing genes may have important implications for implementing cost-effective targeted genetic screening strategies. In this study, we ...evaluated the prevalence and relative risk of the CHEK2 recurrent variant c.349A>G in a series of 462 Portuguese patients with early-onset and/or familial/hereditary prostate cancer (PrCa), as well as in the large multicentre PRACTICAL case-control study comprising 55,162 prostate cancer cases and 36,147 controls. Additionally, we investigated the potential shared ancestry of the carriers by performing identity-by-descent, haplotype and age estimation analyses using high-density SNP data from 70 variant carriers belonging to 11 different populations included in the PRACTICAL consortium. The CHEK2 missense variant c.349A>G was found significantly associated with an increased risk for PrCa (OR 1.9; 95% CI: 1.1-3.2). A shared haplotype flanking the variant in all carriers was identified, strongly suggesting a common founder of European origin. Additionally, using two independent statistical algorithms, implemented by DMLE+2.3 and ESTIAGE, we were able to estimate the age of the variant between 2300 and 3125 years. By extending the haplotype analysis to 14 additional carrier families, a shared core haplotype was revealed among all carriers matching the conserved region previously identified in the high-density SNP analysis. These findings are consistent with CHEK2 c.349A>G being a founder variant associated with increased PrCa risk, suggesting its potential usefulness for cost-effective targeted genetic screening in PrCa families.
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