ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the evidence available to date in favor of a dietary etiology. It describes nondietary factors of possible importance in the etiology of cancer of the prostate in order to estimate their contribution to the cancer burden relative to that of dietary factors. Epidemiology suggests that sugar and egg consumption are weakly positively associated with prostate cancer risk, and dietary fiber and fish inversely. There are very weak epidemiological indications that selenium is inversely related to risk for prostate cancer. The occurence of cancer of the prostate, in terms of both mortality and incidence, shows a considerable geographic variation. In a remarkably high frequency, carcinoma of the prostate is found in material from routine autopsies and in surgical specimens from patients with benign hyperplasia of the prostate, when careful histological examination is performed. Populations migrating from a low-risk area to a high-risk area tend to acquire the high risk for prostate cancer of their new environment.
