THE HYPERTEXT GUIDE TO PROSTATE CANCER

CAUSES OF CANCER

GENETIC CAUSES     RACE     SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS     EATING HABITS
INACTIVITY     HEAVY LABOR     VASECTOMY     BPH     STATISTICS

STUDIES THAT SUPPORT THESE STATEMENTS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.
 
 
Many things predispose us to cancer. Some are beyond our control, many are not. In May 1999, a speaker at the World Conference for Cancer Organizations estimated that 75 to 80 percent of all cancers in the United States could have been avoided.

Many things are believed to cause cancer. Here are the most likely ones (although there are divided opinons on some of them).
 

GENETICS

A man is twice as likely to develop prostate cancer if a close male relative had it or if a close female relative had breast cancer. And the more relatives who had it, the more likely he is to have it. If only for this reason, you should tell your relatives that you have cancer. In addition, prostate cancer that runs in families is usually more aggressive and likely to occur at an earlier age. And if a father was young when diagnosed, it is more likely that the son will develop it at an earlier age. Men whose fathers were diagnosed before 70 were more than 2.5 times more likely to develop it.
Mothers with a mutated breast-cancer gene can also pass on a higher risk. Men who inherit the mutated version of a gene called BRCA2 are nearly five times as likely to develop prostate cancer.
Not all genetic defects are inherited. Some may be the result of a viral infection or environmental or occupational factors as exposure to sun, smoke, x-rays, radon gas, or asbestos.
 

RACE

African-Americans are almost 50 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than European-Americans, and it tends to show up earlier in their lives. Hispanic men have lower rates than European-Americans, and Asian men have much lower rates. It is probable, however, that the country you live in is a more important factor than your ethnic background.
 

EATING HABITS

Diet is known to be a key factor in hormonal cancers, such as prostate cancer and breast cancer. Fats and calories are the leading suspects. Obeisity may also contribute to the aggressiveness of the tumor and to the likelihood of recurrence—and may make it more difficult to treat the organ.
For more information, go to the section on nutrition
 

SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS

Although some studies have suggested that these may have little effect, it seems unlikely that poverty and age do not influence health care. There do not appear to be any direct studies on the links between poverty, fast-food diets that are high in fat, and prostate cancer.
 

INACTIVITY

A study involving 25,624 women found that those who exercised at least four hours a week had nearly a 40 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer than those who were relatively sedentary.
 

HEAVY PHYSICAL LABOR

Heavy physical labor may increase the risk of prostate cancer.
 

VASECTOMY

Men with vasectomies may or may not run a higher risk of prostate cancer. Many studies seem to have demonstrated both results.
 

BPH

Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, a non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate, may be a premalignant condition, but no clear relationship has been shown.
About BPH
 

CANCER STATISTICS

United States       Canada


SOURCES

GENETICS

Hereditary prostate cancer: Epidemiologic and clinical features. Journal of Urology, 1993; 150: 797-802.
Risk of prostate, ovarian, and endometrial cancer among relatives of women with breast cancer. British Medical Journal 1992; 305: 855-857.
Age-specific risks of familial prostate carcinoma: a basis for screening recommendations in high risk populations. Cancer; 86(3):477-83 1999.
BRCA Mutations and Risk of Prostate Cancer in Ashkenazi Jews, Clinical Cancer Research Vol. 10, 2918-2921, May 1, 2004
 

RACE

Cancer statistics for African-Americans. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
Research about survival rates and the aggressiveness of cancer: Surgical control of clinically localized prostate carcinoma is equivalent in African-American and white males. Cancer; 83(11):2353-60 1998.
Statistics for Hispanics: Racial/Ethnic Patterns of Cancer in the United States 1988 to 1992. NIH Pub. No. 96-4104, the National Institute of Health, 1996.
Cancers of the prostate and breast among Japanese and white immigrants in Los Angeles County. British Journal of Cancer. 1991; 63: 963-966.
 

SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS

Differences in 4-year health outcomes for elderly and poor, chronically ill patients treated in HMO and fee-for-service systems. Results from the Medical Outcomes Study. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1996 Oct 2;276(13):1039-47 (Found that older and poorer patients in HMOs received care inferior to that of others.)
Removal of the financial barrier to health care: Does it impact on prostate cancer at presentation and survival? Urology, 1995. (Found that poverty does not seem to affect health-care opportunities.)
Quality of Care in Investor-Owned vs Not-for-Profit HMOs. Journal of the American Medical Association,1999;282:159-163 (Found that quality of care is lower in for-profit HMOs than in not-for-profits.)
 

FOOD AND OBESITY

Overweight, obesity, and mortality from cancer in a prospectively studied cohort of U.S. adults. Calle EE, Rodriguez C, Walker-Thurmond K, Thun MJ. Department of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta 30329, USA. jcalle@cancer.org New England Journal of Medicine 2003 Apr 24;348(17):1625-38. PMID: 12711737 (A study of more than 900,000 U.S. adults over 16 years found that increased body weight was associated with increased death rates for all cancers.)
Obesity linked to some forms of cancer. Brown P, Allen AR. Cancer Prevention and Control, Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA. West Virginia Medical Journal 2002 Nov-Dec;98(6):271-2. (Found that obesity appears to increase the risk of cancers of the breast, colon, prostate, endometrium, cervix, ovary, kidney and gallbladder.)
Pathologic variables and recurrence rates as related to obesity and race in men with prostate cancer undergoing radical prostatectomy. Amling CL, Riffenburgh RH, Sun L, Moul JW, Lance RS, Kusuda L, Sexton WJ, Soderdahl DW, Donahue TF, Foley JP, Chung AK, McLeod DG. Department of Urology, Naval Medical Center, 34800 Bob Wilson Drive, San Diego, CA 92134-5000, USA. clamling@nmcsd.med.navy.mil Journal of Clinical Oncology 2004 Feb 1;22(3):395-8. (Found that obesity is associated with higher grade cancer and higher recurrence rates following prostatectomies, and that African-American males have higher recurrence rates and greater BMI than European-American males.)
 

EXERCISE

Physical Activity and the Risk of Breast Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, May 1, 1997, Vol. 336, No. 18.
 

PHYSICAL LABOR

Lifetime occupational physical activity and prostate cancer risk. American Journal of Epidemiology, 1991;133: 103-111.
 
 
FINDING     ASSESSING     DECIDING     TREATING     LIVING     TOP
Credits, Disclaimer, and Site Information.  Copyright © by Bill Dyckes 1997-2004. You may photocopy and distribute this text but you may not change, publish, or sell it without the written permission of the author. Please see the permissions page. To see abstracts of the studies cited, go to PubMed and enter the PMID number. If there is no number, enter some keywords and the year—for example, biopsy PSAD 0.15 1998. Sorting by pub date or journal makes it easier to get through a large sample. Acess to full texts can be expensive, but some journals give them away. You might also find a free copy by searchingthe Web for the author’s names.