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Cigarette smoking and risk of prostate cancer among Singapore Chinese

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Abstract

Prospective epidemiologic studies conducted in Western populations support an association between current smoking and aggressive subtypes of prostate cancer. In Singapore, where prostate-specific antigen is not used for population-wide screening, prostate cancer incidence has tripled within the past two decades. Using Cox regression methods, we examined the relationship between smoking and prostate cancer established between 1993 and 1998 in a cohort of 27,293 Singapore Chinese men. As of December 2006, 250 incident prostate cancer cases were diagnosed. In our cohort, 42.2% reported never smoking cigarettes, 15.7% quit over 5 years ago (long-term former), 5.7% quit within the past 5 years (recent former), and 36.4% were current smokers. From multivariable models, we observed no association with smoking status, age at starting to smoke, years smoked, or number of cigarettes per day. Among recent former and current smokers combined, we observed a small positive association for earlier age at starting to smoke that was somewhat stronger for nonadvanced disease (hazard ratio = 1.63, 95% confidence interval: 0.85, 3.12, for <15 years versus nonsmokers). Smoking was not a major risk factor for prostate cancer in our Singapore Chinese cohort, a traditionally low risk population with parallel increases in incidence and mortality.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ms. Siew-Hong Low of the National University of Singapore for supervising the field work of the Singapore Chinese Health Study and Ms. Kazuko Arakawa for the development of the cohort study database. We also thank the Singapore Cancer Registry for assistance with the identification of cancer outcomes. This work was supported by grants R01 CA55069 and R35 CA53890 from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, 1681 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO, 80523-1681, USA

    Lesley M. Butler

  2. The Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Renwei Wang & Mimi C. Yu

  3. National University Hospital, Singapore, 117597, Singapore

    Alvin S. Wong

  4. Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117597, Singapore

    Woon-Puay Koh

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  1. Lesley M. Butler
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Correspondence to Lesley M. Butler.

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Butler, L.M., Wang, R., Wong, A.S. et al. Cigarette smoking and risk of prostate cancer among Singapore Chinese. Cancer Causes Control 20, 1967–1974 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-009-9391-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-009-9391-2

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