Calcium clue
Higher levels of blood calcium might signal an increased risk of fatal prostate cancer
By Nathan Seppa
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The body tightly regulates the amount of calcium in the blood, much like a surge protector keeps a computer from being fried by too much electricity. Researchers now find that even a slight excess of blood calcium may increase a man’s risk of developing lethal prostate cancer. The report appears in the September Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
The unsettling report might actually be good news since it could provide a marker for identifying men at unseen risk of this malignancy, says study coauthor Gary Schwartz, an epidemiologist at WakeForestUniversity in Winston-Salem, N.C.