RESEARCH ARTICLE


Cadmium, Sexually Transmitted Disease, and Risk for Prostate Cancer



Jun Li, Roberd M. Bostick*, Kevin C. Ward
Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road, NE, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2009
Volume: 2
First Page: 14
Last Page: 19
Publisher Id: TOEPIJ-2-14
DOI: 10.2174/1874297100902010014

Article History:

Received Date: 11/07/2008
Revision Received Date: 23/12/2008
Acceptance Date: 13/01/2009
Electronic publication date: 11/2/2009
Collection year: 2009

© 2009© 2009 Li et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road, NE, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA; Tel: 404-727-2671; Fax: 404-727-8737; E-mail: rmbosti@sph.emory.edu


Abstract

Background:

Several studies suggested that cadmium and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) may increase risk for prostate cancer. However, these associations are not well established. The aim of this study was to investigate associations among cadmium, STDs, and risk for prostate cancer.

Methods:

A community-based case-control study of 113 newly diagnosed, incident cases and 258 age and race frequency-matched community controls was conducted in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina. All participants completed a medical/lifestyle/dietary questionnaire, underwent anthropometrics, and provided urine samples. Urinary cadmium was used as a biomarker of lifetime cadmium body burden. Multivariable unconditional logistic regression was used to assess associations among cadmium exposure, history of STDs, and risk for incident prostate cancer.

Results:

Neither cadmium nor STD exposures alone were statistically significantly associated with risk for prostate cancer (odds ratio (OR) = 0.91; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.49-1.69; and OR=1.32; 95% CI: 0.49-3.52, respectively). However, men with high urinary cadmium who also had a history of a STD had significantly increased risk for prostate cancer (OR=9.75; 95% CI: 1.28, 74.05), an association that was stronger for advanced tumors.

Conclusions:

These results suggest that cadmium and STD exposures may synergistically increase risk for prostate cancer.

Keywords: Case-control studies, cadmium, prostatic neoplasms, sexually transmitted diseases.