The main outcome of this review was the association between a history of clinical chronic prostatitis (NIH category II or III) and a histologically confirmed diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Crude odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to analyze dichotomous data. For analysis of pooled data we adopted a random-effects model and the inverse variance weighing method. Heterogeneity was assessed by calculating the I2 value.
Out of 2794 screened records, we retrieved 16 full-text articles written in English, reporting the data of 15 case-control studies, involving 422.943 patients. Pooled analysis resulted in a significant crude odds ratio of 1.83 (95% CI: 1.43 to 2.35; P < 0.00001). The total set of data showed considerable heterogeneity (I2 = 91%). Both the Egger's test and the Begg's test for funnel plot asymmetry did not reach statistical significance. The 'trim and fill' method applied to the funnel plot imputed 3 missing studies and the resulting adjusted estimate of the odds ratio was 2.12 (95% CI: 1.38 to 3.22). According to GRADE criteria, the overall quality of the meta-analysis data is low, mainly due to the presence of bias, confounders and extreme effect size outliers. Five among the included studies reported data assessed in 8015 African-American subjects. Pooled analysis resulted in a non-significant crude odds ratio of 1.59 (95% CI: 0.71 to 3.57; P = 0.26), and considerable heterogeneity (I2 = 90%).
Meta-analysis of 15 case-control studies shows that a history of clinical chronic prostatitis can significantly increase the odds for prostate cancer in the general population, whereas such association in African-American individuals remains uncertain.
Archivio italiano di urologia, andrologia : organo ufficiale [di] Societa italiana di ecografia urologica e nefrologica. 2017 Dec 31*** epublish ***
Gianpaolo Perletti, Elena Monti, Vittorio Magri, Tommaso Cai, Anne Cleves, Alberto Trinchieri, Emanuele Montanari
Department of Biotechnology and Life Sciences, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Busto A., Italy Department of Human Structure and Repair, Faculty of Medicine and Medical Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. .