[anaphor]

Keep in mind that this does not mean you have a 70% chance of getting prostate cancer if you take fish oil supplements.

Based on this[0], it's roughly an increase from about 0.02% chance to about 0.034% chance (given no other information to base your risk on)

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706483/

[com2kid]

My understanding was that basically every man will, if they live long enough, have some cancerous cells in their prostate.

The main risk seems to be going from "so slow growing you die of old age first" to "fast enough growing it becomes a problem", unless I am horribly mistaken.

[papa_bear]

I worked in a lab that was studying prostate cancer for a summer internship, and most of our samples came from young men who died in motorcycle accidents. They found that a majority of the samples had some presence of benign tumors, but it only really becomes noticeable once malignant tumors develop.

I don't know how representative the samples were of the entire population - one theory was that our young motorcycle samples had significantly higher testosterone on average and were more likely to develop those tumors.

[sandworm101]

Young, and dead motorcyclists. Young male motorcyclist is the definition of testosterone-fueled lethality. (I grew out of sportbikes after two good friends died.)

[nerflad]

I'm sorry about your friends. My dad has lost at least one, been hit no fewer than 5 times (none his fault), and gone down one other time (lowsided at Deal's Gap). Miraculously he is still alive. This post probably makes him sound much more reckless than he really is. He is the most cautious person I know, probably due to these experiences.

[nabla9]

The so called balls to brain ratio.

[chillwaves]

I ride bikes but am low T. For shame.

[pintxo]

One pathologist I happen to know, says the chances of finding cancer cells in your prostate is about the same as your age: 50 -> 50% chance, 60 -> 60%.

[jazoom]

This is how most doctors I know perceive it as well. I know quite a few doctors since I'm one myself.

[nraynaud]

agreed, and the headline talks about "link" because such a refined thinking doesn't fit in a headline.

[insertnickname]

And this:

>This was a large, well designed study that supports previous research linking high blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids with prostate cancer risk. However, it cannot show that fish oil supplements cause prostate cancer and it is possible that other confounders affected men’s risk (although the researchers tried to take these into account).

Their conclusion contradicts their own headline.

[shishy]

It does not contradict their headline.

Headline says there is some correlation between the two but they are careful to explain later that this does not necessarily imply causation and that further research is required.

[insertnickname]

The correlation they have found is between high levels of fish oil in blood tests and prostate cancer. They do not know whether those high levels are the result of supplementation or merely of eating fish. At least that's how I understood the article.

[shishy]

Fair but the article does address this albeit briefly:

"Still, it is unlikely that the high levels of these fatty acids found in the highest quartile would be the result of diet alone. Adults are advised to eat two portions of fish a week, one of them oily, as part of a healthy balanced diet."

You are right that the study doesn't explicitly say fish oil supplements directly caused the high levels of fish oil which were observed in these patients with prostate cancer.

Dailymail at it again :).

[insertnickname]

I suppose the NHS isn't to blame for what the Daily Mail wrote, but it's a bit confusing that they have a page on their website with the title "Fish oil supplements linked to prostate cancer". I now see that it's supposed to be part of a whole series ("Behind the Headlines") dissecting articles about health, so the headline is a quote or a restatement of what the Daily Mail wrote. It would be nice if they put it in quotemarks or otherwise indicated more clearly that they, the NHS, aren't making the claim (which clearly they aren't).

[dfawcus]

As I understand it, the fact that 1.00 is included in the range of CI indicates that the result in question could well be down to random chance/variation. i.e. because 1.00 is included, chance has not been eliminated.