Impact of age and metabolic syndrome-like components on prostate cancer development: a nationwide population-based cohort study

BACKGROUND: Because of the contradictory results, more epidemiologic data is needed to determine if metabolic syndrome is a risk factor for developing prostate cancer. This study investigated whether metabolic syndrome-like components affect the incidence of prostate cancer in a Korean population. METHODS: Men over 50 years of age who underwent health examinations in 2009 were followed until December 2015 (n=1,917,430) using National Health Insurance System data. Subjects were divided into three groups according to the number of metabolic syndrome-like components. The predictive accuracy of age for prostate cancer was assessed by the Youden index and multivariate adjusted Cox regression analysis was used to analyze the effect of metabolic syndrome-like components on prostate cancer development. RESULTS: The risk of prostate cancer increases with age, and the best cutoff age for prostate cancer detection was 62 years (the maximum value of the Youden index). When stratified by the number of metabolic syndrome-like components, the age with the highest Youden index of each group is still 61 or 62 years. In multivariate adjusted Cox regression analysis, there was no statistically significant difference in the incidence rate among the non-component group, the group with 1 or 2 components, and the group with ≥3 components. CONCLUSIONS: The current study found that there was no statistically significant association between metabolic syndrome and prostate cancer development in a Korean population. However, results of this study should be interpreted with consideration due to several limitations including the diversity of definitions of metabolic syndrome components.