Obese men have an increased risk of prostate cancer recurrence and death after radiation therapy, according to a study led by Dr. David Palma at the British Columbia Cancer Agency. Obesity had already been known to predict cancer progression in men who underwent complete removal of the prostate gland. The researchers examined whether obesity is related to outcome for patients who underwent external beam radiation therapy. They examined three groups, normal weight, overweight and obese. There were no differences in the patients' Gleason scores, PSA scores or cancer stage. Testosterone blood levels were lower in the obese men.
The average time to relapse was 93 months for the normal-weight men, 88 months for the overweight men and 84 months for the obese men. Explanations given by the researchers include dietary factors and changes in hormonal levels.
1. In 1997, we published a study entitled Competing Risks of Mortality in Prostate Cancer. The study says that an underlying factor might explain variations in disease-specific and disease-nonspecific mortality. In other words, this original evil factor might make you fat and dead of prostate cancer. If true, it would imply that being fat has nothing to do with making you dead faster from prostate cancer. Rather it would mean that being fat and death from cancer markers of the same unidentified variable.
Posted at 4:14PM on Nov 13th 2007 by ak