Environmental Risk Of Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer, one of the most common form of cancer in males, is a complex, heterogeneous disease. It is the fifth most common cancer in the world and the second most common cancer among men with substantial difference in prevalence in different ethnic groups (Ferlay et al. 2004; Sadjadi et al. 2007). Prostate cancer remains an important public health concern in western countries and an emerging malignancy in developing nations. Risk of prostate cancer is not only associated with environmental or lifestyle related factors. However, several other factors are also associated. For instance, genetic risk factors include both high penetrance and low penetrance genes, the former contributes to only 5-10% of prostate cancer risk whereas the latter in combination with environmental risk factors may attribute to a greater proportion of prostate cancer risk (Coughlin and Hall 2002). …show more content…
It accounted for 14% of the total new cancer cases and 6% of the total cancer deaths in males in 2008 (Jernal et al. 2011). Generally, prostate cancer is known to be a multifactorial disease induced by complex interactions between environmental and genetic factors(Becker, 2011). Hormonal factors also play a fundamental role in the progression of prostate cancer through estrogen synthesis, metabolism and signal transduction pathways (Zhao et al. 2012). Currently, a wide range of genes such as AR, CYP17/19, NOS, PSA, ESR1/2, etc have been identified to be associated with prostate cancer, (Onsory et