Influence of obesity on localized prostate cancer patients treated with radical prostatectomy

This study aimed to investigate the association between different anthropometric measures of obesity and clinicopathological characteristics in Chinese patients with clinically localized prostate cancer (PCa). A total of 734 patients with clinically localized PCa who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) were included in this study. Clinical and pathological data from each patient were collected. Anthropometric measures of abdominal adiposity were measured from T2-weighted sagittal localisation images from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for 413 (56.3%) patients. Patient clinical and pathological characteristics were compared across body mass index (BMI) groups. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were used to address the influence of the preoperative total testosterone level and anthropometric measures of obesity on pathological outcomes. In the multivariate analysis, BMI was not significantly associated with any pathological outcomes. However, the percentage of visceral adipose tissue (VAT%) was an independent predictor of a pathological Gleason score >= 8 (P<0.001), extracapsular extension (ECE; P=0.002) and seminal vesicle invasion (SVI; P=0.007). More importantly, we found that the preoperative total testosterone level was significantly correlated with the VAT% (Pearson's correlation coefficient: -0.485, P<0.001) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT; Pearson's correlation coefficient: 0.413, P<0.001). In conclusion, the results of this study suggest that abdominal fat distribution, and particularly VAT%, is associated with a risk of advanced PCa. Moreover, our present study confirms a significant inverse correlation between visceral adiposity and testosterone. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the biological mechanisms underlying the relationship between abdominal adiposity and the aggressiveness of PCa.