Cigarette smoking, obesity, and benign prostatic hypertrophy: a prospective population-based study.

The authors examined the relation of smoking and obesity to surgically treated benign prostatic hypertrophy in a prospective study of white men aged 40-79 years who were first examined in 1972-1974 and were followed for an average of 12 years. After exclusion of those whose surgery preceded assessment of smoking and obesity and those who had prostate cancer, there were 165 cases of benign prostatic hypertrophy among 929 men. Age-adjusted relative risk of benign prostatic hypertrophy in current or previous smokers compared with nonsmokers was 1.1 (95% confidence interval 0.8-1.6). Age-adjusted relative risk of benign prostatic hypertrophy in the most obese tertile (body mass index (kg/m2) greater than 26.75) compared with the remainder showed a relative risk of 0.9 (95% confidence interval 0.6-1.4). Multivariate analysis also failed to show a relation between cigarette smoking or obesity and the development of surgically treated benign prostatic hypertrophy.