Background: Organochlorine (OC) insecticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been shown to have estrogenic, antiestrogenic, or antiandrogenic properties; as a result, the impact of exposure to these compounds and risk of hormonal cancers, such as prostate cancer, is a concern.
Objectives: We conducted a nested case–control study, using prospectively collected serum, to estimate associations between OC exposures and metastatic prostate cancer in a population-based cohort from Norway.
Methods: Sera from 150 cases and 314 controls matched on date of blood draw, age at blood draw, and region was used to determine concentrations of 11 OC pesticide metabolites and 34 PCB congeners. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for quartiles of lipid-corrected metabolite levels were calculated using conditional logistic regression.
Results: Metastatic prostate cancer was two times as likely among men with serum concentrations of oxychlordane in the highest quartile compared with those in the lowest quartile (OR = 2.03; 95% CI: 1.03, 4.03; p-trend 0.05). Elevated but nonsignificant ORs were estimated for the highest versus lowest quartile of heptachlor epoxide, HCB, and mirex, although these exposures were correlated with oxychlordane. Findings for specific PCB congeners showed a significant inverse association between natural log–transformed lipid-adjusted PCB 44 and metastatic prostate cancer (OR = 0.74; 95% CI: 0.56, 0.97; p-trend = 0.02).
Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of estimating associations with specific OC chemicals and suggests a possible role of OC insecticides and PCBs in the etiology of metastatic prostate cancer.
1Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 2Department of Research, Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research, Oslo, Norway; 3Department of Environmental Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 4Division of Environmental Epidemiology, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; 5Division of Epidemiology, Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA; 6Department of Epidemiology, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Recommended Citation:
Stella Koutros,1 Hilde Langseth,2 Tom K. Grimsrud,et al. Prediagnostic Serum Organochlorine Concentrations and Metastatic Prostate Cancer: A Nested Case–Control Study in the Norwegian Janus Serum Bank Cohort[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2015-01-01,Volume 123(Issue 9):867