Adherence to a healthy lifestyle is associated with close to a 50% lower risk for developing lethal prostate cancer among men at high risk for the disease, according to a study published in European Urology. Anna Plym, PhD, and colleagues examined whether men at an increased genetic risk for prostate cancer can offset their risk for disease or disease progression by adhering to a healthy lifestyle. The analysis included 12,411 genotyped men participating in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1993-2019) and the Physicians’ Health Study (1983-2010). The polygenic risk score (PRS) enabled risk stratification not only for overall prostate cancer but also for lethal disease, with a four-fold difference between men in the highest and lowest quartiles (HR, 4.32). Adhering to a healthy lifestyle was associated with a decreased rate of lethal prostate cancer (HR, 0.55) for men in the highest PRS quartile compared with having an unhealthy lifestyle, yielding a lifetime risk of 1.6% among healthy men and 5.3% among the unhealthy men. No association was seen between adhering to a healthy lifestyle and decreased risk for overall prostate cancer.
