Dietary boron intake and prostate cancer risk

Boron affects human steroid hormone levels. Circulating testosterone and estradiol levels have been proposed to modify prostate cancer risk. However, the association between dietary boron intake and the risk of prostate cancer has not been evaluated by any epidemiological study. We explored the association between dietary boron intake and the risk of prostate cancer in the USA. Our analysis was based on data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). Cross-sectional case-control study design was employed by comparing boron intake of 95 prostate cancer cases with that of 8,720 male controls. After controlling for age, race, education, smoking, body mass index, dietary caloric intake, and alcohol consumption, increased dietary boron intake was associated with a decreased risk of prostate cancer with a dose-response pattern. The adjusted odds ratio was 0.46 (95% confidence interval: 0.21-0.98) for the highest quartile of boron intake comparing to the lowest quartile (P for trend = 0.0525). The observed association should be interpreted with caution because of the small case sample size and the nature of the cross-sectional study design, but deserve further investigation.