BPH, or benign prostate hyperplasia, is a common condition in older men, but the risk of developing the condition seems to be increased by obesity and high blood sugar levels, researchers report.

“BPH is a significant public health problem,” Dr. J. Kellogg Parsons from the University of California San Diego told Reuters Health. “Our findings suggest that, with the current epidemics of obesity and diabetes, BPH will pose an even greater problem in the near future.”

BPH can lead to troublesome difficulty with urination - urgency, discomfort, and incomplete voiding. The condition can be relieved surgically or by taking medication.

Parsons’ team examined the association between BPH and factors such as obesity, blood glucose concentration and diabetes, with MRI measurement of prostate volumes in 422 men aged 27 to 84 years.

Ninety-one (22 percent) of these participants had enlarged prostates, the researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Men with enlarged prostates were heavier and had a higher age-adjusted body mass index (BMI) than men without enlarged prostates, the authors report. Each 1-point rise in BMI was associated with a 0.41 cubic centimeter increase in prostate volume.

Very obese men were especially likely to have an enlarged prostate, with 3.5-times the risk compared with their normal-weight counterparts.

Blood glucose concentration was also associated with the risk of prostate enlargement, the results indicate. Those with elevated glucose had 3-times the risk of having an enlarged prostate.

Diabetics were more than twice as likely to have prostate enlargement compared with men without diabetes, the researchers note.

“We are currently designing studies to determine why obese and diabetic men have larger prostates,” Parsons commented. “In the future, we would like to perform clinical trials of BPH prevention.”

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, July 2006.