Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer.
OBJECTIVE
Men with prostate cancer are often advised to make changes in diet and lifestyle, although the impact of these changes has not been well documented. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of comprehensive lifestyle changes on prostate specific antigen (PSA), treatment trends and serum stimulated LNCaP cell growth in men with early, biopsy proven prostate cancer after 1 year.


METHODS
Patient recruitment was limited to men who had chosen not to undergo any conventional treatment, which provided an unusual opportunity to have a nonintervention randomized control group to avoid the confounding effects of interventions such as radiation, surgery or androgen deprivation therapy. A total of 93 volunteers with serum PSA 4 to 10 ng/ml and cancer Gleason scores less than 7 were randomly assigned to an experimental group that was asked to make comprehensive lifestyle changes or to a usual care control group.


RESULTS
None of the experimental group patients but 6 control patients underwent conventional treatment due to an increase in PSA and/or progression of disease on magnetic resonance imaging. PSA decreased 4% in the experimental group but increased 6% in the control group (p = 0.016). The growth of LNCaP prostate cancer cells (American Type Culture Collection, Manassas, Virginia) was inhibited almost 8 times more by serum from the experimental than from the control group (70% vs 9%, p <0.001). Changes in serum PSA and also in LNCaP cell growth were significantly associated with the degree of change in diet and lifestyle.


CONCLUSIONS
Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of early, low grade prostate cancer in men. Further studies and longer term followup are warranted.
Ornish
Dean
D
Department of Medicine, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, University of California-San Francisco, 94965, USA. d.ornish@pmri.org
Weidner
Gerdi
G
Fair
William R
WR
Marlin
Ruth
R
Pettengill
Elaine B
EB
Raisin
Caren J
CJ
Dunn-Emke
Stacey
S
Crutchfield
Lila
L
Jacobs
F Nicholas
FN
Barnard
R James
RJ
Aronson
William J
WJ
McCormac
Patricia
P
McKnight
Damien J
DJ
Fein
Jordan D
JD
Dnistrian
Ann M
AM
Weinstein
Jeanmaire
J
Ngo
Tung H
TH
Mendell
Nancy R
NR
Carroll
Peter R
PR
D000368:Aged; D017209:Apoptosis / Q000502:physiology; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D014676:Diet, Vegetarian; D018450:Disease Progression; D015444:Exercise; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011467:Prostate / Q000473:pathology; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen / Q000097:blood*; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000097:blood / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured / Q000502:physiology
D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen