Men who display chronic-inflammation in non-cancerous prostate tissue could have twice the risk of developing prostate cancer as those who don't.
"What we've shown in this observational study is a clear association between prostate inflammation and prostate cancer, although we can't prove that inflammation is a cause of prostate cancer," said Elizabeth A. Platz, Sc.D., M.P.H., a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Medicine, said in a Johns Hopkins University news release.
The researchers believe chronic inflammation could be used as a "diagnostic tool" to detect prostate cancer. In the future the team hopes they will be able to gain insight into what causes the inflammation and how it's linked to prostate cancer.
"I think there will be strategies going forward for either preventing inflammation or intervening when it occurs," Platz said.
The researchers made their findings by looking at the placebo group of a trial for a prostate-prevention drug called finasteride. In the trial prostate biopsies were conducted even if there was no sign of cancer.
"Our study was designed to rule out the bias that would ordinarily exist between the way we detect prostate cancer and the presence of inflammation," Platz said. "Because inflammation makes PSA levels go up, men with inflammation are more likely to have higher PSA and, with a rising PSA, they're more likely to be biopsied. By doing more biopsies on these men, prostate cancer is more likely to be detected, even if inflammation is not a cause of prostate cancer."
The research team looked at biopsies from 191 men suffering from prostate cancer and 209 men without the disease; they identified cells that indicated inflammation.
The study showed 86.2 percent of the prostate cancer patients had at least one tissue sample that showed signs of inflammation, this was true in only 78.2 of the cancer-free participants. The research suggests men with prostate inflammation were 1.78 times more likely to develop prostate cancer and 2.24 more likely to have aggressive prostate cancer.
"We knew going into this research that inflammation in the prostate is very common in men who have biopsies because of the higher PSA levels and other indicators of prostate cancer," cancer researcher Angelo M. De Marzo, M.D., Ph.D.,, who is a professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine and associate director of cancer research pathology at its Kimmel Cancer Center, said in the news release. "But we did not anticipate the high prevalence of prostate inflammation in men who didn't have an indication for biopsy."
