Life Threatening Prostrate Cancer Linked to High Blood Calcium

A latest American study found that men who have higher levels of calcium in their bloodstream are at an increased risk of developing life threatening prostate cancerdefinedefine.

Researchers from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin said that a very simple method (blood test) may pinpoint at men who are at an increased risk of developing fatal prostrate tumors cancerdefine is available which can check the elevated levels of calcium in the blood. They added that medications are already available in the market which can lower the calcium levels in the blood-stream.

Prostate cancerdefine affects 1 in eleven men in Australia and is common in the people above 65 years. In 2008, estimated new cases and deaths from prostrate cancer in US are 186,320 and 28,660 respectively. Every year approximately 35,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Britain.

Co-author of the study, Gary G. Schwartz, Ph.D., associate professor of cancer biology and of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest University School said, “We show that men in upper range of the normal distribution of serum calcium subsequently have an almost three-fold increased risk for fatal prostate cancer.”

The team of researchers looked at the data of 2,814 male who took part in the long term health survey, where they all gave blood samples that revealed calcium levels.

The study, which appears in the Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention in the September issue found that men in the top third of blood calcium levels had 2.7 times the risk of developing life threatening prostate cancer as compared to those in the lower third. The researchers accounted for differences in body weight, race and age.

The blood samples were taken on an average 9.9 years before cancer appeared -- 25 men had died of prostate cancer in a decade.

Writing in their journal authors said that testing blood for calcium was not very predictive of whether a man would get prostate cancer which is not capable of causing death, but was highly predictive of whether a man would get a dangerous case.

The researchers said that serum calcium is generally tightly regulated by hormone known as parathyroid, so there is little difference in a person’s serum calcium over time. Schwartz said, “Calcium is basically the current that runs many of the functions of your body. Calcium is important for not only neuromuscular conductions, electrical conductions, but for the conduction of muscles in your heart.”

If there is less amount of calcium in the bloodstream, less than 7 milligrams per deciliter than it can cause uncontrolled muscular convulsions while on the other hand if there is excess of calcium in the blood, above 14 milligrams per deciliter, can cause a coma. “Your body obviously cannot afford to oscillate between convulsions and coma, so the range of serum calcium is tightly controlled.”

Another co-author of the study, Halcyon Skinner, a researcher at the School of Medicine and Public Health at Wisconsin, said that there is "little relationship between calcium in the diet and calcium in serum. So men needn't be concerned about reducing their ordinary dietary intakes of calcium."

Prostate cancer usually occurs in older men. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in men, lung cancer being the first and is rare in men younger than 40.

The symptoms of prostate cancer may include problems while urinating, such as pain, difficulty starting or stopping the stream or dribbling and low back pain. The treatments for prostate cancer include: surgical removal of the prostate gland, external beam radiationdefine and hormone treatment. Death from prostate cancer is if left untreated a very painful way to die.

Another latest study conducted by researchers from Bristol University on thousands of men show that ‘being tall’ also play an important role in developing prostrate cancer. The researchers found that height raises a person risk of developing the disease by 20 percent a foot.

Twin studies published last month in journal BJU International found that diagnosis and surgical removal of 'malignant prostate tumors' is more difficult in obese and overweight men than in normal weight men.