Late puberty onset and lack of acne during adolescence reduce high-grade prostate cancer at adulthood

Background: The interplay between pubertal events patterns (PEP) and prostate cancer (PCa) remains poorly understood. Therefore, we investigated the association of PEP with the odds of PCa, and PCa histological differentiation in men residents of Mexico city. Methods: In this case–control study, we analyzed the information of 371 incident prostate cancer cases and 775 controls matched on age (±5 years). High-grade prostate cancer was classified with Gleason score at diagnosis as ≥8. With information related to beard growth, age at maximum height attainment, and acne severity, the k-medoids algorithm was used to identify three mutually exclusive PEP (early, intermediate, and late). This association was evaluated using multivariable nonconditional logistic regression models. Results: Men with late PEP, characterized by age at maximum height attainment at around 23 years and no history of acne, was inversely associated with incident (odds ratio [OR]: 0.27; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.15–0.48, p trend <0.01) and high-grade prostate cancer (OR: 0.24; 95% CI: 0.09–0.59, p trend <0.01). Similar associations were observed even after adjusting by IGF-1 (OR: 0.19; 95% CI: 0.06–0.58) and androgens excretion (OR: 0.21; 95% CI: 0.06–0.66). Only the association between the absence of acne and prostate cancer remained significant after adjustment by these biomarkers. Conclusions: This study suggests that pubertal characteristics might be helpful in identifying risk groups, among which, secondary prevention strategies could be applied. Also, the results agree with previous work suggesting other potential biological mechanisms involved in the etiology of prostate cancer such as the infectious and inflammatory pathways.