Obesity and prostate cancer clinical risk factors at presentation: data from CaPSURE

We investigated the association of obesity with prostate cancer case demographics and clinical disease features at presentation.

Data were abstracted from CaPSURE (Cancer of the Prostate Strategic Urologic Research Endeavor), a disease registry of 10,018 men with prostate cancer. A total of 2,952 men were included who were treated between 1989 and 2002, and had complete body mass index (BMI) information. BMI classes were defined as normal (less than 25 kg/m), overweight (25 to 29.9 kg/m), obese (30 to 34.9 kg/m) or very obese (35 kg/m or greater). Patients were categorized as having low, intermediate or high risk disease based on the D'Amico classification. Associations among BMI, risk and demographics were analyzed using univariate and multivariate models.

Of the patients 29% had a normal BMI, 51% were overweight, 16% were obese and 5% were very obese. Patients who were overweight or obese were more likely to be young, have hypertension and diabetes, and have a lower education level. The overweight group had a lower serum prostate specific antigen (p = 0.010) and lower stage disease (p = 0.030) at diagnosis, but there was no association between Gleason score and obesity (p = 0.57). However, among men with a BMI of 25 kg/m or greater there was a positive correlation between increasing BMI and risk of being in a worse prognostic group at diagnosis (p = 0.018).

Overweight and obese patients are more likely to be young at diagnosis and have multiple comorbidities. Men in the overweight and obese groups presented with lower risk prostate cancer at diagnosis. This may be due to earlier disease detection secondary to more frequent interaction with the medical community. Among overweight and obese patients increased obesity is associated with a slightly increased chance of having high risk prostate cancer at diagnosis.