Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Canynge Hall, 39 Whatley Road, Bristol, BS8 2PS, United Kingdom.
Circulating insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) has been studied extensively in prostate cancer, but there is still little information about IGFs and IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs) in cancers detected by the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. Here we report the findings of a United Kingdom-based case-control study to investigate circulating IGFs and IGFBPs in PSA-detected prostate cancer with regard to their potential associations with different cancer stages or grades. PSA testing was offered to 110,000 men aged 50-69 years from 2002-2009. Participants with an elevated level of PSA (≥ 3.0 ng/ml) underwent prostate biopsy and measurements of blood serum IGF-I, IGF-II, IGFBP-2 and IGFBP-3 obtained at recruitment. We found that serum levels of IGF-II (OR per standard deviation increase: 1.16; 95%CI 1.08,1.24;ptrend< 0.001), IGFBP-2 (1.18;1.06,1.31;ptrend< 0.01) and IGFBP-3 (1.27;1.19,1.36;ptrend< 0.001), but not IGF-I (0.99;0.93,1.04;ptrend=0.62), were associated with PSA-detected prostate cancer. After controlling for IGFBP-3, IGF-II was no longer associated (0.99;0.91,1.08;ptrend=0.62) and IGF-I was inversely associated (0.85;0.79,0.91;ptrend< 0.001) with prostate cancer. In addition, no strong associations existed with cancer stage or grade. Overall, these findings suggest potentially important roles for circulating IGF-II, IGFBP-2 and IGFBP-3 in PSA-detected prostate cancer, in support of recent in vitro evidence. While our findings for IGF-I agree with previous results from PSA-screening trials, they contrast with positive associations in routinely-detected disease, suggesting that reducing levels of circulating IGF-I might not prevent the initiation of prostate cancer but might nonetheless prevent its progression.
Written by:
Rowlands MA, Holly JM, Gunnell D, Donovan JL, Athene Lane J, Hamdy F, Neal DE, Oliver S, Davey Smith G, Martin RM. Are you the author?
Reference: Cancer Res. 2011 Nov 21. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-11-1601
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 22106399
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