Effect of Comorbidity on Prostate Cancer-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Observational Study.

Purpose To determine the effect of comorbidity on prostate cancer (PCa)-specific mortality across treatment types. Patients and Methods These are the results of a population-based observational study in Sweden from 1998 to 2012 of 118,543 men who were diagnosed with PCa with a median follow-up of 8.3 years (interquartile range, 5.2 to 11.5 years) until death from PCa or other causes. Patients were categorized by patient characteristics (marital status, educational level) and tumor characteristics (serum prostate-specific antigen, tumor grade and clinical stage) and by treatment type (radical prostatectomy, radical radiotherapy, androgen deprivation therapy, and watchful waiting). Data were stratified by Charlson comorbidity index (0, 1, 2, or ≥ 3). Mortality from PCa and other causes and after stabilized inverse probability weighting adjustments for clinical patient and tumor characteristics and treatment type was determined. Kaplan-Meier estimates and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to calculate hazard ratios. Results In the complete unadjusted data set, we observed an effect of increased comorbidity on PCa-specific and other-cause mortality. After adjustments for patient and tumor characteristics, the effect of comorbidity on PCa-specific mortality was lost but maintained for other-cause mortality. After additional adjustment for treatment type, we again failed to observe an effect for comorbidity on PCa-specific mortality, although it was maintained for other-cause mortality. Conclusion This large observational study suggests that comorbidity affects other cause-mortality but not PCa-specific- mortality after accounting for patient and tumor characteristics and treatment type. Regardless of radical treatment type (radical prostatectomy or radical radiotherapy), increasing comorbidity does not seem to significantly affect the risk of dying from PCa. Consequently, differences in oncologic outcomes that were observed in population-based comparative effectiveness studies of PCa treatments may not be a result of the varying distribution of comorbidity among treatment groups

Biochemical Recurrence and Risk of Mortality Following Radiotherapy or Radical Prostatectomy

Importance: Stratifying patients with biochemical recurrence (BCR) after primary treatment for prostate cancer based on the risk of prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM) is essential for determining the need for further testing and treatments. Objective: To evaluate the association of BCR after radical prostatectomy or radiotherapy and its current risk stratification with PCSM. Design, Setting, and Participants: This population-based cohort study included a total of 16 311 male patients with 10 364 (64%) undergoing radical prostatectomy and 5947 (36%) undergoing radiotherapy with curative intent (cT1-3, cM0) and PSA follow-up in Stockholm, Sweden, between 2003 and 2019. Follow-up for all patients was until death, emigration, or end of the study (ie, December 31, 2018). Data were analyzed between September 2022 and March 2023. Main Outcomes and Measures: Primary outcomes of the study were the cumulative incidence of BCR and PCSM. Patients with BCR were stratified in low- and high-risk according to European Association of Urology (EAU) criteria. Exposures: Radical prostatectomy or radiotherapy. Results: A total of 16 311 patients were included. Median (IQR) age was 64 (59-68) years in the radical prostatectomy cohort (10 364 patients) and 69 (64-73) years in the radiotherapy cohort (5947 patients). Median (IQR) follow-up for survivors was 88 (55-138) months and 89 (53-134) months, respectively. Following radical prostatectomy, the 15-year cumulative incidences of BCR were 16% (95% CI, 15%-18%) for the 4024 patients in the low D'Amico risk group, 30% (95% CI, 27%-32%) for the 5239 patients in the intermediate D'Amico risk group, and 46% (95% CI, 42%-51%) for 1101 patients in the high D'Amico risk group. Following radiotherapy, the 15-year cumulative incidences of BCR were 18% (95% CI, 15%-21%) for the 1230 patients in the low-risk group, 24% (95% CI, 21%-26%) for the 2355 patients in the intermediate-risk group, and 36% (95% CI, 33%-39%) for the 2362 patients in the high-risk group. The 10-year cumulative incidences of PCSM after radical prostatectomy were 4% (95% CI, 2%-6%) for the 1101 patients who developed low-risk EAU-BCR and 9% (95% CI, 5%-13%) for 649 patients who developed high-risk EAU-BCR. After radiotherapy, the 10-year PCSM cumulative incidences were 24% (95% CI, 19%-29%) for the 591 patients in the low-risk EAU-BCR category and 46% (95% CI, 40%-51%) for the 600 patients in the high-risk EAU-BCR category. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest the validity of EAU-BCR stratification system. However, while the risk of dying from prostate cancer in low-risk EAU-BCR after radical prostatectomy was very low, patients who developed low-risk EAU-BCR after radiotherapy had a nonnegligible risk of prostate cancer mortality. Improving risk stratification of patients with BCR is pivotal to guide salvage treatment decisions, reduce overtreatment, and limit the number of staging tests in the event of PSA elevations after primary treatment.</p

Characteristics of Patients in SPCG-15-A Randomized Trial Comparing Radical Prostatectomy with Primary Radiotherapy plus Androgen Deprivation Therapy in Men with Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer

Background: There is no high-grade evidence for surgery as primary treatment for locally advanced prostate cancer. The SPCG-15 study is the first randomized trial comparing surgical treatment with radiotherapy. Objective: To describe the baseline characteristics of the first 600 randomized men in the SPCG-15 study. The study will compare mortality and functional outcomes. Design, setting, and participants: This study is a Scandinavian prospective, open, multicenter phase III randomized clinical trial aiming to randomize 1200 men. Intervention: Radical prostatectomy with or without consecutive radiotherapy (experimental) and radiotherapy with neoadjuvant androgen deprivation therapy (standard of care). Outcome measurements and statistical analysis: Cause-specific survival, metastasis-free survival, overall survival, and patient-reported bowel function, sexual health, and lower urinary tract symptoms were measured. Results and limitations: The distribution of characteristics was similar in the two study arms. The median age was 67 yr (range 45-75 yr). Among the operated men, 36% had pT3a stage of disease and 39% had pT3b stage. International Society of Urological Pathology grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 were prevalent in 21%, 35%, 7%, and 27%, respectively. Half of the men (51%) in the surgery arm had no positive lymph nodes. The main limitation is the pragmatic design comparing the best available practice at each study site leading to heterogeneity of treatment regimens within the study arms. Conclusions: We have proved that randomization between surgery and radiotherapy for locally advanced prostate cancer is feasible. The characteristics of the study population demonstrate a high prevalence of advanced disease, well-balanced comparison groups, and a demography mirroring the Scandinavian population of men with prostate cancer at large. Patient summary: This study, which has recruited >600 men, compares radiotherapy with surgery for prostate cancer, and an analysis at the time of randomization indicates that the study will be informative and generalizable to most men with locally advanced but not metastasized prostate cancer. (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of European Association of Urology.Peer reviewe

Cohort profile: the Turin prostate cancer prognostication (TPCP) cohort

IntroductionProstate cancer (PCa) is the most frequent tumor among men in Europe and has both indolent and aggressive forms. There are several treatment options, the choice of which depends on multiple factors. To further improve current prognostication models, we established the Turin Prostate Cancer Prognostication (TPCP) cohort, an Italian retrospective biopsy cohort of patients with PCa and long-term follow-up. This work presents this new cohort with its main characteristics and the distributions of some of its core variables, along with its potential contributions to PCa research.MethodsThe TPCP cohort includes consecutive non-metastatic patients with first positive biopsy for PCa performed between 2008 and 2013 at the main hospital in Turin, Italy. The follow-up ended on December 31st 2021. The primary outcome is the occurrence of metastasis; death from PCa and overall mortality are the secondary outcomes. In addition to numerous clinical variables, the study’s prognostic variables include histopathologic information assigned by a centralized uropathology review using a digital pathology software system specialized for the study of PCa, tumor DNA methylation in candidate genes, and features extracted from digitized slide images via Deep Neural Networks.ResultsThe cohort includes 891 patients followed-up for a median time of 10 years. During this period, 97 patients had progression to metastatic disease and 301 died; of these, 56 died from PCa. In total, 65.3% of the cohort has a Gleason score less than or equal to 3 + 4, and 44.5% has a clinical stage cT1. Consistent with previous studies, age and clinical stage at diagnosis are important prognostic factors: the crude cumulative incidence of metastatic disease during the 14-years of follow-up increases from 9.1% among patients younger than 64 to 16.2% for patients in the age group of 75-84, and from 6.1% for cT1 stage to 27.9% in cT3 stage.DiscussionThis study stands to be an important resource for updating existing prognostic models for PCa on an Italian cohort. In addition, the integrated collection of multi-modal data will allow development and/or validation of new models including new histopathological, digital, and molecular markers, with the goal of better directing clinical decisions to manage patients with PCa

Etiological insights into the testicular cancer epidemic

The aim of this thesis was to search for causes of the testicular cancer epidemic through epidemiologic studies of testicular cancer and possibly related conditions, such as urogenital birth defects and subfertility. First, we assessed changes in fertility over time by studying time-to-pregnancy among primiparous women in Sweden from 1983 through 1993 using data from the Medical Birth Registry. The analyses revealed a substantial decrease of subfertility over successive maternal birth cohorts. Thus, there was no detectable increment in subfertility problems paralleling the increase in testicular cancer during the study period. Second, we performed a nested case-control study to evaluate specific perinatal characteristics as risk factors for testicular cancer. Perinatal information about 232 case patients and 904 control subjects was obtained from birth records. We found elevated risks associated with neonatal jaundice and high or low birth weight. When the two histopathologic types of testicular cancer, seminoma and nonseminoma, were analyzed separately, high socioeconomic status, neonatal jaundice, and low birth weight were associated with nonseminomas, whereas high placental weight appeared to increase the risk for seminomas. Third, we investigated risk factor patterns for cryptorchidism and hypospadias in two case-control studies using record linkage between the Swedish Inpatient and Birth Registries. Cases were 2,782 and 1,220 boys operated for cryptorchidism or hypospadias, respectively. Partly similar risk patterns were revealed for the two conditions: both were positively associated with other congenital malformations and inversely with maternal parity. There was also evidence of a strong joint effect of intrauterine growth retardation and short duration of gestation, with highly increased risks among preterm boys born small-for-gestational-age. Fourth, seroreactivity against cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) was evaluated in relation to testicular cancer risk in a case-control study, nested in a cohort of prospectively collected serum specimens from 293,692 individuals. For 81 cases of testicular cancer and 242 controls, serum IgG titers were determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and immunofluorescence methods. No association was found between CMV positivity and testicular cancer. For EBV, the risk of testicular cancer was increased almost threefold among individuals seropositive for viral capsid antigen. Power limitations, however, hamper conclusive inference. Fifth, we conducted a cohort study using anthropometrical data of 477,248 men who attended a tuberculosis-screening program in Norway between 1963 and 1975. Five hundred and fifty three cases of testicular cancer were diagnosed up to 1989. High body mass index (BMI) was associated with a decreased risk of testicular cancer whereas height was positively associated with risk. The associations appeared more pronounced for seminomas than for nonseminomas. Thus, hormonal exposures may have different effects on different histologic subgroups, and if so, such exposures cannot explain the dramatic rise in testicular cancer incidence, which comprises both types. It is furthermore hypothesized that impaired placental function is important in the etiology of testicular cancer, and that improved survival of growth-retarded and prematurely born neonates may have contributed to the increasing trend

Family History and Probability of Prostate Cancer, Differentiated by Risk Category : A Nationwide Population-Based Study

Background: Familial prostate cancer risk estimates are inflated by clinically insignificant low-risk cancer, diagnosed after prostate-specific antigen testing. We provide age-specific probabilities of non-low-and high-risk prostate cancer. Methods: Fifty-one thousand, eight hundred ninety-seven brothers of 32 807 men with prostate cancer were identified in Prostate Cancer data Base Sweden (PCBaSe). Nelson-Aalen estimates with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for cumulative, family history-stratified probabilities of any, non-low-(any of Gleason score &gt;= 7, prostate-specific antigen [PSA] &gt;= 10 ng/mL, T3-4, N1, and/or M1) and high-risk prostate cancer (Gleason score &gt;= 8 and/or T3-4 and/or PSA &gt;= 20 ng/mL and/or N1 and/or M1). Results: The population probability of any prostate cancer was 4.8% (95% CI = 4.8% to 4.9%) at age 65 years and 12.9% (95% CI = 12.8% to 12.9%) at age 75 years, of non-low-risk prostate cancer 2.8% (95% CI = 2.7% to 2.8%) at age 65 years and 8.9% (95% CI = 8.8% to 8.9%) at age 75 years, and of high-risk prostate cancer 1.4% (95% CI = 1.3% to 1.4%) at age 65 years and 5.2% (95% CI = 5.1% to 5.2%) at age 75 years. For men with one affected brother, probabilities of any prostate cancer were 14.9% (95% CI = 14.1% to 15.8%) at age 65 years and 30.3% (95% CI = 29.3% to 31.3%) at age 75 years, of non-low-risk prostate cancer 7.3% (95% CI = 6.7% to 7.9%) at age 65 years and 18.8% (95% CI = 17.9% to 19.6%) at age 75 years, and of high-risk prostate cancer 3.0% (95% CI = 2.6% to 3.4%) at age 65 years and 8.9% (95% CI = 8.2% to 9.5%) at age 75 years. Probabilities were higher for men with a stronger family history. For example, men with two affected brothers had a 13.6% (95% CI = 9.9% to 17.6 %) probability of high-risk cancer at age 75 years. Conclusions: The age-specific probabilities of non-low-and high-risk cancer presented here are more informative than relative risks of any prostate cancer and more suitable to use for counseling men with a family history of prostate cancer

Fathering of dizygotic twins and risk of prostate cancer : nationwide, population-based case-control study

Background: An association between male fertility and risk of prostate cancer has been suggested, possibly through lower androgen levels in subfertile men. We evaluated male fertility in relation to risk of prostate cancer by assessing the frequency of fathering of dizygotic twins, a marker of high fertility, among cases of prostate cancer and controls. Methods: We performed a case-control study in Prostate Cancer data Base Sweden (PCBaSe), a nationwide, population-based cohort. PCBaSe was linked to the Swedish twin register for information on zygosity for same-sex twins and to other nationwide health care registers and demographic databases for information on socioeconomic factors, comorbidity, and tumor characteristics for 96 301 prostate cancer cases and 378 583 matched controls. To account for the influence of in vitro fertilization on dizygotic twinning, analyses were restricted to men who had fathered children before 1991, when in vitro fertilization was still uncommon in Sweden. Results: 1 112 cases and 4 538 controls had fathered dizygotic twins. Men with dizygotic twins had no increased risk of prostate cancer compared to fathers of singletons; neither for total prostate cancer odds ratio (OR) 0.95(95% CI 0.89-1.02), nor for any risk category, OR 0.97 (95% CI 0.84-1.12) for low-risk disease, and OR 1.04 (95% CI 0.90-1.22) for metastatic disease. Conclusion: The lack of association between fathering of dizygotic twins and prostate cancer risk give no support for an association between male fertility and prostate cancer risk.Originally included in thesis in manuscript form.</p