Race, obesity may affect prostate surgery’s success
POSTED January 16, 2010 - 13:29 | POSTED BY Neha Jindal
Last edited by Kangna Agarwal on January 16, 2010 - 14:30
The study showed that diabetes was extensively linked with more destructive disease in obese white men and the risk was less frequent in other subsets of men.
1262 diabetic prostate cancer patients studied
The medical records of 1,262 prostate cancer patients undergoing major prostatectomy surgery to amputate the prostate gland and some surrounding tissue, were examined by the researchers.
The researchers found a connection between diabetes and a greater risk of cancer recurrence. They also concluded that white obese men were more prone to the aggressive disease than other groups of men.
“We really don't know what mechanisms might be in place that could account for this relationship,” said Dr. Stephen Freedland, an associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke Prostate Center at Duke University.
“But,” he added, “diabetes is associated with low levels of insulin and testosterone, an inhospitable environment for tumor growth. This is compounded in obese white men who also have lower insulin-like growth factor levels. The thinking is that if a tumor is powerful enough to grow in such a hostile environment, then it's probably a pretty aggressive one.”
Details of the study appear in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and prevention.
About prostate cancer
A prostate is a walnut-sized gland, found only in men, is located in front of the rectum and beneath the urinary bladder.
Prostate has several cells, but the cancer mainly develops out of the prostate gland cells. Gland cells are responsible to make the prostate fluid that is added to the semen. This form of cancer is called adenocarcinoma.
Other rare types of cancer that generate out of the prostate gland are sarcomas-- cancer of the connective tissue, small cell carcinomas-- cancer of the gland proteins and transitional cell carcinomas-- cancer of the urinary system.
Most of the prostate cancer grows slowly, excepting some, which tend to grow faster.
Doctors believe that prostate cancer begins with a pre-cancerous condition that begins to appear in the gland of men as early as their 20s. About half of men develop the pre-cancerous condition by the age of 50.
Autopsy studies revealed that 70 to 80 percent men tended to develop a prostate cancer by the age of 80.
These studies showed that a major number of older men and a small number of younger men dying of other diseases also had prostate cancer that never got diagnosed.
