Previous studies have observed inconsistent associations between birth weight and aggressive prostate cancer risk. This study aimed to prospectively analyse this association in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS).
Birth weight was self-reported in 1994, and prostate cancer diagnoses were assessed biennially through January 2017 and confirmed by medical record review. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression was used to evaluate the association between birth weight and prostate cancer risk and mortality.
Among 19,889 eligible men, 2520 were diagnosed with prostate cancer, including 643 with higher-grade/advanced stage, 296 with lethal, and 248 with fatal disease. Overall, no association was observed for increasing birth weight with risk of overall prostate cancer, lower-grade, and organ-confined disease. However, a borderline statistically significant positive trend was observed for increasing birth weight with risk of higher-grade and/or advanced-stage prostate cancer (adjusted hazard ratio [HRadj] per pound: 1.05; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.99-1.11; P-trend = 0.08), but no associations were observed with risk of lethal or fatal disease (HRadj: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.91-1.08; P-trend = 0.83; and HRadj: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.90-1.08; P-trend = 0.82, respectively).
No consistent associations were observed between birth weight and prostate cancer risk or mortality in this 22-year prospective cohort study.
British journal of cancer. 2024 Feb 22 [Epub ahead of print]
Qinran Liu, Yiwen Zhang, Jane B Vaselkiv, Lorelei A Mucci, Edward L Giovannucci, Elizabeth A Platz, Siobhan Sutcliffe
Department of Public Health Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA. ., Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA., Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD, USA., Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery; and the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.