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Pre-diagnostic circulating sex hormone levels and risk of prostate cancer by ERG tumour protein expression.

Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, 1450 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA. Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, 1959 Northeast Pacific Street, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 450 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Pathology Unit, Addarii Institute, S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, Via Pietro Albertoni, 15, 40138 Bologna, Italy. Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 181 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Department of Medicine Solna, Karolinska Institutet, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.

British journal of cancer. 2016;(8):939-44
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Abstract

BACKGROUND Experimental studies have shown androgen receptor stimulation to facilitate formation of the TMPRSS2:ERG gene fusion in prostate cell lines. No study has tested whether higher pre-diagnostic circulating sex hormone levels in men increase risk of developing TMPRSS2:ERG-positive prostate cancer specifically. METHODS We conducted a nested case-control study of 200 prostate cancer cases and 1057 controls from the Physicians' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. We examined associations between pre-diagnostic circulating levels of total testosterone, free testosterone, DHT, androstanediol glucuronide, estradiol, and SHBG and risk of prostate cancer by TMPRSS2:ERG status. TMPRSS2:ERG was estimated by ERG immunohistochemistry. We used multivariable unconditional polytomous logistic regression to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for risk of ERG-positive (n=94) and, separately, ERG-negative (n=106) disease. RESULTS Free testosterone was significantly associated with the risk of ERG-positive prostate cancer (OR: 1.37, 95% CI: 1.05-1.77), but not ERG-negative prostate cancer (OR: 1.09, 95% CI: 0.86-1.38) (Pdiff=0.17). None of the remaining hormones evaluated showed clear differential associations with ERG-positive vs ERG-negative disease. CONCLUSIONS These findings provide some suggestive evidence that higher pre-diagnostic free testosterone levels are associated with an increased risk of developing TMPRSS2:ERG-positive prostate cancer.