Background:
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common and most lethal cancer in male urogenital system. There is insufficient convincing data addressing whether exposure of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) increases the risk of PCa or cancer related deaths.
Aim:
To investigate the association between PM2.5 concentrations and PCa incidence and mortality.
Methods:
It is a population study based on pubic data provided by the US government. County-level PM2.5 concentrations from 2001 to 2010 were downloaded from the US EPA Air Quality Statistics Report. Annual PM2.5 data includes the 98th percentile (%ile) of the daily average measurements and the weighted annual mean (Wtd Mean, mean weighted by calendar quarter). County-level data of PCa profiles were obtained from the State Cancer Profiles website, including age-standardized annual incidence rates and annual mortality rates for all races, including Hispanics, from 2006 to 2010. Linear regression analysis was performed to estimate correlations. Probability (p) value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results:
Higher levels of average PM2.5 Wtd Means and average PM2.5 98th %ile values in period of 2001 to 2005 were associated with higher incidence (p<0.05), higher levels of average PM2.5 Wtd Means in period of both 2001 to 2005 and 2006 to 2010 were associated with higher mortality (p<0.05).
Conclusions:
For the first time, it is confirmed that ambient PM2.5 concentrations are positively associated with increased mortality in PCa, not only long-term exposure, but also short peaks of exposure may contribute to the increased incidence of PCa.