Oxidative stress and body composition in prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia patients

To investigate the role of body composition and oxidative stress measured by total thiol groups (TTG) levels in prostate specimens of patients affected by benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) or prostate cancer (PCa).

From January 2011 to January 2013, a cohort of 150 consecutive male patients who underwent first prostate biopsy were enrolled. Twelve-core needle biopsy was performed as standard procedure, while twelve more needle tissue cores matched with the previous group were also collected for glutathione determination. After definitive diagnosis, measurement of glutathione was performed in the correspondent one matched prostatic sample where PCa or BPH were identified. A day after the prostatic biopsy, body composition was estimated by air plethysmography (BOD POD®).

A significant difference of TTG was observed in BPH and PCa patients; 34 nanomole (nmol) reagent sulfihydrylc (RSH)/ mg protein vs. 1.1 nmol RSH/ mg protein respectively (p<0.05). In BPH patients, a negative correlation was found between TTG and age (r=-0.46; p<0.05), while, in PCa patients, a positive correlation was observed between TTG and fat mass (FM) (r=0.76; p<0.01) and waist circumference (WC) (r=0.49; p<0.05). Multivariate linear regression analysis showed TTG to be negatively associated with age (β-coefficient=-0.4; p<0.05) in BPH patients and positively with FM (β-coefficient=3.4; p<0.01) and WC (β-coefficient=2.7; p<0.05) in PCa patients.

Aging determines a progressive reduction of TTG in BPH patients, while in PCa subjects glutathione concentrations are significantly lower and FM and WC are associated with an unbalance of its levels.