Obesity, Insulin Level Impact Prostate Cancer Survival

Heavy men with high output of the hormone had quadruple the death risk, study found

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

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SUNDAY, Oct. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Men who are overweight and who have high insulin levels when they are diagnosed with prostate cancer may be more likely to die from the disease, research shows.

This striking finding, published early online and expected to be in the November issue of The Lancet Oncology, is yet more reason to continue fighting the battle of the bulge, experts say.

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"I don't want to be sensationalist, but obesity effects and the insulin effects are so big that I think if you had to choose between being thin and having a low insulin level or having access to the best chemotherapy, you would be more likely to survive without chemotherapy," said study senior author Dr. Michael Pollak, professor of oncology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

"Tens of thousands of men are taking chemotherapy for prostate cancer -- as they should, because it is a good treatment. Doing so is actually helping," he said. "But potentially, dealing with insulin, obesity may one day be of more benefit."

The findings also have scientific import, giving researchers a clue that could lead to new prevention and treatment strategies.

Experts have long known that androgens, or male hormones, play a critical role in spurring prostate cancer.

In fact, these cancers are often treated with approaches that deprive the tumors of testosterone.

Smaller reports have suggested that obese patients with prostate cancer have a worse prognosis than patients of regular weight, though weight hasn't been related to actually developing a malignancy.

"We found in a large sample that obesity has a very important influence on prostate cancer outcome," Pollak said. "Then the question becomes, why would obesity make the outcome worse?"

Pollak and his colleagues looked at information on more than 2,500 men who had been followed for 24 years as part of the Physicians' Health Study. Information on body mass index (BMI) was available for all of these men, while information on C-peptide concentration (a marker of insulin levels in the blood) was available for 827 men.

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