Prostate patients who say no to surgery ‘can live for years’

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Sept. 1 (UPI) — The disparity between African-American and white men with prostate cancer has diminished over time, U.S. researchers found.

Body mass in younger and older adulthood, and weight gain between these periods of life, may influence a man’s risk for prostate cancer. This risk varies among different ethnic populations, according to results of a new study.

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the longtime Republican lawmaker from Wisconsin, will undergo radiation treatment for prostate cancer.

Routine screening for prostate cancer has resulted in more than 1 million U.S. men being diagnosed with tumors who might otherwise have suffered no ill effects, researchers said.

Surgery to remove small, low-risk prostate cancer tumors can be safely delayed for years without an increased risk of death, according to results from a large long-term study published Monday.

A popular blood test for prostate cancer is leading many men to get treated for cancer when the treatment might not make much of a difference, according to a study in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute . The study’s conclusions are in agreement with two earlier studies published last spring in the New England Journal of Medicine .

New research out of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center shows that some men diagnosed with prostate cancer could be better off not getting treatment at all.

Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) — Prostate-cancer therapies for men whose disease didn’t need treatment cost at least $40 billion during two decades in the U.S., according to a Dartmouth Medical School researcher.

The PSA blood test for prostate cancer was once widely pushed as a way to reduce the 27,000 deaths a year from the cancer. But a new study shows the test has not lived up to its promise. Critics charge the test may do harm than good, leading to overdiagnoses that result in treatments with damaging side effects.