Nut consumption and prostate cancer risk and mortality

Little is known of the association between nut consumption, and prostate cancer (PCa) incidence and survivorship.

We conducted an incidence analysis and a case-only survival analysis in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study on the associations of nut consumption (updated every 4 years) with PCa diagnosis, and PCa-specific and overall mortality.

In 26 years, 6810 incident PCa cases were identified from 47 299 men. There was no association between nut consumption and being diagnosed with PCa or PCa-specific mortality. However, patients who consumed nuts five or more times per week after diagnosis had a significant 34% lower rate of overall mortality than those who consumed nuts less than once per month (HR=0.66, 95% CI: 0.52-0.83, P-trend=0.0005).

There were no statistically significant associations between nut consumption, and PCa incidence or PCa-specific mortality. Frequent nut consumption after diagnosis was associated with significantly reduced overall mortality.British Journal of Cancer advance online publication, 9 June 2016; doi:10.1038/bjc.2016.181 www.bjcancer.com.

British journal of cancer. 2016 Jun 09 [Epub ahead of print]

Weike Wang, Meng Yang, Stacey A Kenfield, Frank B Hu, Meir J Stampfer, Walter C Willett, Charles S Fuchs, Edward L Giovannucci, Ying Bao

Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Department of Urology, University of California, San Francisco, 550 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA., Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, 181 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA., Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, 181 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.