High cholesterol ‘directly linked’ to prostate cancer

High cholesterol levels are directly linked to prostate cancer, Italian scientists today claimed.

Writing in the in Annals of Oncology, Dr Francesca Bravi, a researcher based in Milan, said that men with high cholesterol levels had up to an 80 per cent higher risk of contracting prostate cancer.

Overall, Dr Bravi said that men with prostate cancer were around 50 per cent more likely to have had high cholesterol levels, rising to 80 per cent in the over-65s.

Though admitting that the self-reporting of medical conditions could give some error, Dr Bravi said that “the absence of an association between prostate cancer and about ten other medical conditions we investigated indicates that the relationship we found between prostate cancer and high cholesterol appears to be a real one.”

Over a quarter of patients surveyed had gallstones which Dr Bravi saw as a symptom of high cholesterol, supporting her linking of it to the cancer.

Co-author Dr Cristina Bosetti added that cholesterol in the blood synthesised androgen hormones which could lead to prostate cancer.

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