Body Size and Prostate Cancer

Anthropometry deals with the comparative measurements of the human body and its associated parts which is widely utilized as a method of assessing human body compositions. A number of studies have been done to assess the relation of body size to prostate cancer. Investigations of the relation between body size and prostate cancer used anthropometric measurement focusing mainly on weight and measurements of obesity such as the body mass index (BMI) that is highly correlated with percent body fat. Obesity is associated with numerous endocrine changes which leads to lowered sex hormone-binding globulin that could increase testorene levels. Researchers believed that testosterone is related to prostate cancer risk. Moreover obesity is related to insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Studies have supported the presence of positive association of insulin-like growth factors-1 with prostate cancer risk. However case-control studies have noted inconsistency of results on BMI which is related to both lean body mass and body fat leading to limitation of interpretation of results. In this regard inexpensive and uninvasive methods of assessing adiposity need to be developed as substitute to the commonly used BMI that has apparent shortcomings in estimating obesity.