Men whose serum calcium levels fall within the high end of the normal range are three times more likely to develop fatal prostate cancer, a new report shows.
The results suggest the possibility of a new biomarker for aggressive prostate cancer, the researchers said. But one expert cautioned against reading too much into the study, given the relatively small number of individuals involved.
Gary Schwartz, of Wake Forest University Health Sciences in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Halcyon Skinner, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and NHANES Epidemiologic Follow-up Study to determine the risk of prostate cancer among men with relatively high, but still normal, blood serum calcium readings.