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Epidemiology

Adolescent dietary patterns in relation to later prostate cancer risk and mortality in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study

British Journal of Cancer volume 128, pages 57–62 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background

Although adolescent diet has been proposed to contribute to prostate cancer (PCa) development, no studies have investigated the relation between adolescent dietary patterns and PCa risk or mortality.

Methods

Using data from 164,079 men in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, we performed factor analysis to identify dietary patterns at ages 12–13 years and then used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of total (n = 17,861), non-advanced (n = 15,499), advanced (n = 2362), and fatal PCa (n = 832).

Results

Although not entirely consistent across analyses, a higher adolescent plant-based pattern (characterised by vegetables, fruits, and dark bread) score was associated with slightly reduced risks of total (fully adjusted HRQ5vs.Q1 = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.89–0.98, p trend=0.003) and non-advanced PCa (HR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.87–0.96, p trend<0.001), whereas no associations were observed for advanced or fatal PCa, or for Western modern (characterised by sweets, processed meat, beef, cheese, and pizza) or Western traditional (characterised gravy, eggs, potatoes and white bread) patterns.

Conclusion

We found evidence to support a modest, protective role for a plant-based dietary pattern during adolescence on PCa risk. If confirmed in future studies, our findings may help to inform the development of new, primary prevention strategies for PCa.

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Data availability

AARP Study data are available through the National Cancer Institute.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Linda Liao for assistance with acquiring AARP Study data and Dr. Stephanie Smith-Warner, Sherry Yaun, and Tao Hou for assistance defining prostate cancer outcomes.

Funding

This analysis was funded by the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation, the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center P30CA091842, and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, College of Public Health, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Tuo Lan

  2. Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Tuo Lan, Yikyung Park, Graham A. Colditz, Jingxia Liu & Siobhan Sutcliffe

  3. Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Yikyung Park, Graham A. Colditz, Jingxia Liu & Siobhan Sutcliffe

  4. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Molin Wang

  5. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Molin Wang & Edward Giovannucci

  6. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Molin Wang & Edward Giovannucci

  7. Department of Nutrition, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Kana Wu & Edward Giovannucci

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  1. Tuo Lan
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Contributions

YP: participated in the design of the parent study; TL, YP, GAC, JL, MW, KW, EG, and SS: conceived the present study; TL, YP, and SS: participated in the analysis of the study; TL and SS: wrote the manuscript and had primary responsibility for final content; and all authors: critically reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Siobhan Sutcliffe.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by the Special Studies Institutional Review Board of the National Cancer Institute. Consent from participants was obtained from investigators for the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study at enrolment.

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Lan, T., Park, Y., Colditz, G.A. et al. Adolescent dietary patterns in relation to later prostate cancer risk and mortality in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. Br J Cancer 128, 57–62 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-022-02035-7

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