THURSDAY, Oct. 30 (HealthDay News) -- A new study shows that men who take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins have lower blood levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a biomarker for prostate cancer risk.

That drop in PSA levels doesn't necessarily mean the drugs protect against disease however, researchers say.

But it's possible that statins may offer some protection against the disease, said Dr. Robert Hamilton, one author of the report in the Oct. 28 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. He worked on the study while a research fellow at Duke University; he is now a urology resident at the University of Toronto.

"The reduction in PSA was in proportion to the dose of statins that were taken and to the reduction of cholesterol levels," Hamilton said, indicators of a possible protective effect.

The study was done because of "encouraging recent data" from four previous studies showing an association between statin therapy and reduced PSA levels, and a reduced risk of advanced prostate cancer, he said.

The study followed 1,214 men who were prescribed statins between 1990 and 2006 at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in North Carolina. PSA levels declined by about 4 percent after statin therapy was started, with the greatest reductions seen in men who took the largest doses of statins and had the largest drops in blood cholesterol levels.

The results parallel those of a study reported in 2005 by a group led by Dr. Dov Kadmon, a professor of urology at the Baylor College of Medicine.

"Our study was the first to show a relationship between PSA levels and either lowering of cholesterol or treatment with statins," Kadmon said. "We could not distinguish whether lowering cholesterol or statin treatment was responsible, because our study was not designed to show that."

Kadmon and his colleagues followed 100 commercial airline pilots, a group chosen because federal regulations require them to have regular medical exams. The five-year study showed that "pilots on statins had a 46 percent decrease in PSA levels, while the control group had a slow increase in PSA levels, which are known to go up with age," Kadmon said.

The study was too small and too short to tell whether statins might protect against prostate cancer, Kadmon said. "But we know that when men have higher PSA levels, there is a higher chance that they will be diagnosed with prostate cancer," he said. "It is worth looking into by conducting a larger study."

"There is no question that a large, randomized, controlled trial with a long follow-up would most likely answer the question," Hamilton said. "It would be an expensive, huge undertaking."

Why statins affect PSA levels is unclear, Hamilton said. "We have some idea of how statins interact with prostate biology," he said. "But we don't know the exact mechanism by which statins influence PSA."

The anti-inflammatory action of statins is one of the possible mechanisms, Hamilton said. "We need to learn more about prostate cancer and statins before we launch a huge study," he added.

More information

Statins and other drugs that lower cholesterol are described by the American Heart Association  .

TUESDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Red really is the color of love for men, according to two University of Rochester psychologists who conducted a series of experiments to determine how color affected men's responses to women.

The results showed that red makes men feel more amorous toward women, even though males aren't aware of the impact red has on their feelings.

Red has long been linked to romantic love and passion, but this is the first scientific evidence of its effect on relationship behavior. The findings were published online Oct. 28 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"It's only recently that psychologists and researchers in other disciplines have been looking closely and systematically at the relationship between color and behavior. Much is known about color physics and color physiology, but very little is known about color psychology," study co-author and psychology professor Andrew Elliott said in a university news release. "It's fascinating to find that something as ubiquitous as color can be having an effect on our behavior without our awareness."

Elliott and Daniela Niesta, a postdoctoral researcher, studied men's responses to photographs of women under a variety of color presentations. The men were asked to look at photos of women framed by either red or white and asked a series of questions, such as "How pretty do you think this person is?" This was repeated in other tests that compared red with gray, green or blue.

In another experiment, the shirts of women in photos were digitally colored red or blue, and the men were asked about their attraction to the women and their intentions regarding dating, including how much money they would spend on their date.

Compared to when they were shown pictures with other colors, the women were considered by the men to be much more attractive, sexually desirable, and worthy of a more expensive date when they were framed by or shown wearing red. But red didn't affect how men rated the women in terms of likeability, intelligence or kindness, and had no effect on how females rated the attractiveness of the other females.

Social conditioning may partly explain red's aphrodisiacal effect in men, but their responses likely stem from deeper biological roots, said the researchers, who noted that previous studies found that nonhuman male primates are particularly attracted to females displaying red. For example, female chimpanzees and baboons redden when nearing ovulation -- a clear sexual signal to males.

"Our research demonstrates a parallel in the way that human and nonhuman male primates respond to red," the study authors concluded. "In doing so, our findings confirm what many women have long suspected and claimed -- that men act like animals in the sexual realm. As much as men might like to think that they respond to women in a thoughtful, sophisticated manner, it appears that at least to some degree, their preferences and predilections are, in a word, primitive."

The findings have implications for product design and marketing, the fashion industry, and dating, according to the researchers.

And while this study found that red enhanced men's romantic feelings, other studies have found the impact of a color can depend on context. For example, it's been shown that the presence of red in competitive settings, such as sporting events or written examinations, results in worse performance.

More information

A University at Buffalo expert believes neurochemical processes explain romantic attraction  .