Skinner HG and Schwartz GG (2008) Serum calcium and incident and fatal prostate cancer in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 17: 2302–2305

Men with elevated serum calcium levels might have an increased risk of fatal prostate cancer, according to a new American study. Previous research has shown that both calcium and parathyroid hormone, which controls serum calcium levels, can promote growth and metastasis of prostate cancer cells.

Skinner and Schwartz analyzed data from 2,814 men (aged 24–77 years at baseline) enrolled in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Serum calcium measurements were taken at baseline. Over a follow-up period of 46,188 person years, 85 incident cases of prostate cancer and 25 prostate cancer deaths occurred. On dividing these cases into three groups according to serum calcium levels, the researchers found that men in the upper tertile (mean serum calcium 10.2 ± 0.3 mg/dl) had nearly three times the risk of fatal prostate cancer compared with men in the middle and lower tertiles (mean serum calcium levels 9.7 ± 0.1 mg/dl and 9.3 ± 0.3 mg/dl, respectively). No such association was identified for incident prostate cancer.

According to the authors, these results suggest that serum calcium levels are comparable to family history in predicting the risk for fatal prostate cancer. They explain that these findings could be important because, unlike family history, serum calcium level is a risk factor that can be controlled with medication. Skinner and Schwartz added that, owing to the small number of fatal cases in the present study, further prospective studies are required to confirm these findings.