Muscle-Building Supplements Linked to Testicular Cancer Veronica Hackethal, MD April

[Steve B]

Has anyone read this article or heard any buzz around the topic? Certainly believe in benefits of creatine for recovery, but have a little concern as a Testicular Cancer Survivor over 20 years ago.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...l&uac=140564SK

[Mark Rippetoe]

This link is password protected. What possible mechanism could there be between creatine monohydrate and testicular cancer?

[mike]

What possible mechanism could there be between creatine monohydrate and testicular cancer?

you obviously haven't been paying attention to the current medical research/break-throughs made available at the grocery store check-out tabloids library

weekly world news always carries the good stuff years before its appearance in the new england medical journal, the journal of the american medical assoc., the british medical journal, or even the medical journal of australia

plus they always have great photos, like "bat boy!" and "hillary clinton's alien baby!" (i wonder if bill knows?)

this is where sully gets all his good ideas! :-)

[Bobr]

Seems it's correlation, no mechanisms at all. I can't get behind the paywall to read the fulltext (http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v1...jc201526a.html), but from the medscape article there is not clear whether the authors distinguish between different "muscle-building supplements". sounds to me they are throwing creatine and steroids under one roof with the conclusion, although there is stated that "The interviewers also asked about lifetime MBS use, including use of 30 different types of MBS powders or pills. The researchers used product labels to assess major ingredients, including creatine, protein, androstenedione."
if anyone can get the fulltext, I'd like to know what's in the article itself.

[Strega]

Googled and found this...

Creatine Linked to Testicular Cancer

[Mark Edward]

I think this is the study.

Muscle-building supplement use and increased risk of testicular germ cell cancer in men from Connecticut and Massachusetts

background: No analytic epidemiological study has examined the relationship between use of muscle-building supplements (MBSs) and testicular germ cell cancer (TGCC) risk.
methods: We conducted a population-based case–control study including 356 TGCC cases and 513 controls from Connecticut and Massachusetts.
results: The odds ratio (OR) for ever use of MBSs in relation to risk of TGCC was significantly elevated (OR=1.65, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.11–2.46). The associations were significantly stronger among early users, men with more types of MBSs used, and longer periods of use.
conclusions: MBS use is a potentially modifiable risk factor that may be associated with TGCC.

Data collection
All subjects included in the study completed an in-person and standardised, structured questionnaire implemented by trained study interviewers. A total of 356 cases and 513 controls were included in the present study with a participation rate of 57.4% for the cases and 47.8% for the controls. The interview included questions about a wide variety of characteristics suspected to be associated with the risk of TGCC, including MBS. MBS use was defined as use for at least once a week for greater than or equal to4 consecutive weeks. The interview included an assessment of 30 different types of MBS powders or pills. The major ingredients, including creatine, protein, and androstenedione or its booster, were abstracted according to the product ingredients.

So these authors got questionnaires from 204 cancer patients and 245 controls about what supplements they used, and found a correlation between use of supplements and testicular cancer. They didn't attempt to look for causation, didn't bother to distinguish between types of supplements, and in fact they appear to consider whey protein, creatine, and prohormones to be equivalent. So, in other words, the study doesn't show shit. Take your fucking creatine if you want.

[Bill Been]

With respect to supplements and cancers, both testicular and cloacal, our Oncology Department has, with alarming regularity or even in some more or less routine and/or obscure cases, alarming irregularity an association between both transitive unregulated cellular mitosis and uncontained or at best loosely contained cellular apoptosis, which, as you'd expect, results in homeostasis. More research is needed, obviously.

[CJ Gotcher]

I can't get to it either, but I suspect this is the study you're talking about. This came up in the Nutrition forum as well as Ends and Pieces when the study came out in April. Examine.com, junkscience, and a few other websites have done good reviews of the study's limitations, but for cliff notes:

The study lumped all 'muscle-building supplements' together into one group, including creatine, protein, and androstedione (the three most frequently listed)
There was no verification of the contents of the supplements the test cases thought they took (a serious question in today's supplement industry)
For a connection this vague, the test group was pretty small (67 total instances of people both using MBS and being diagnosed with testicular cancer)
Controls were assessed by medical record, but the cases were volunteer and knew the purpose of the study
The case group had higher rates of groin injury and cryptorchidism, which is a known risk factor for testicular cancer

The first point alone, in my opinion, makes the study worthless for connecting "muscle-building supplements" as a category to any end-state. Any internet news source that headlined this as "Study Shows Creatine Causes Testicular Cancer" (and that's many, according to Google) is guilty of shoddy, clickbait journalism. If all you're taking is creatine, your business is safe.

[sergiogodoymd]

To read this. I think is the same old "Correlation does not imply causation", are the users in the study using other type or drugs besides muscle-building supplement? or something like that.

If you are concerned just don't use them, you don't need them at all.

[morbidlyfat]

If I had to guess, which apparently I do without a password, I might guess this is related to ongoing quality-control issues around contamination with heavy metals, etc, in some supplements from some companies. But, again, merely a guess.