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Italianity is associated with lower risk of prostate cancer mortality in Switzerland

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Abstract

Purpose

Different prostate cancer mortality rates observed in European countries may depend on cultural background. We aimed at exploring variation in prostate cancer mortality in the language regions of Switzerland as a function of “Italianity”, a proxy for adherence to an Italian lifestyle.

Methods

We used data of the Swiss National Cohort, a census-based record linkage study, consisting of census (1990 and 2000) and mortality (until 2008) data. 1,163,271 Swiss and Italian nationals 40+-year old were included. Multivariate age-standardized prostate cancer mortality rates and hazard ratios (HR) from Cox proportional hazards regression analysis were performed. Italianity was defined by an individual’s nationality, place of birth and principal language, resulting in a score of 0–3 points.

Results

Age-standardized prostate cancer mortality rates (per 100,000 person-years) were lowest in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland (66.7 vs. 87.3 in the German-speaking region). Both Italian nationality and/or place of birth were significantly associated with lower mortality. There was a graded inverse association between mortality rates and increasing Italianity score. Individuals with the highest level of Italianity had a HR of 0.67 (95 % CI 0.59–0.76) compared to those with an Italianity score of zero. Results were similar when looking at language regions separately.

Conclusions

The strong and consistent association between Italianity and prostate cancer mortality suggests protective properties of an Italian lifestyle. Further research is required in order to determine which factors specific for Italian culture are responsible for the lower prostate cancer mortality.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Swiss Federal Statistical Office for providing mortality and census data and for the support, which made the Swiss National Cohort and this study possible. The members of the Swiss National Cohort Study Group are Matthias Egger (Chairman of Executive Board), Adrian Spoerri, Marcel Zwahlen (all Bern), Milo Puhan (Chairman of Scientific Board), Matthias Bopp (both Zurich), Nino Künzli (Basel), Fred Paccaud (Lausanne) and Michel Oris (Geneva). This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grants 3347CO-108806 and 33CS30-134273) and Uniscientia Stiftung.

Conflict of interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Correspondence to Matthias Bopp.

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For the Swiss National Cohort Study Group.

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Richard, A., Faeh, D., Rohrmann, S. et al. Italianity is associated with lower risk of prostate cancer mortality in Switzerland. Cancer Causes Control 25, 1523–1529 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-014-0456-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-014-0456-5

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