News & Views
Prostate cancers in black men could be missed through active surveillance
Jun 27 2013
Prostate cancers in black men could be missed as a result of active surveillance, a new study has found.
The research from Johns Hopkins found that African-Americans diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancers are more likely than white men to have an aggressive disease that is unrecognised with existing diagnostic approaches.
A report of the study has been posted online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, where it has been described as the biggest assessment of race-based health disparities in men diagnosed with a slow-growing, non-aggressive form of prostate cancer.
The findings highlighted that preoperative characteristics were similar for very-low-risk whites and blacks, but black men had worse Charlson comorbidity index scores, which assesses life expectancy.
A detailed analysis also showed that black men had a lower rate of organ-confined cancers at 87.9 per cent and a significantly higher hazard of prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-defined biochemical recurrence (BCR) of prostate cancer.
Urologist Edward M. Schaeffer, a co-author of the study, said: “This is critical information because if African-American men do have more aggressive cancers, as statistics would suggest, then simply monitoring even small cancers that are very low risk would not be a good idea because aggressive cancers are less likely to be cured.
“We think we are following a small, non-aggressive cancer, but in reality, this study highlights that in black men, these tumors are sometimes more aggressive than previously thought.”
He went on to say that alternate race-specific surveillance entry criteria should be developed and utilised for African-American men to guarantee oncologic parity with their white counterparts.
New strategies are also being developed to accurately risk-classify African-Americans with newly diagnosed prostate cancer, which should improve chances of survival.
However, Mr Schaeffer admitted that the figures are restricted because they are from a retrospective analysis of the experiences of a single academic medical centre.
Posted by Fiona Griffiths
Digital Edition
LMUK 49.7 Nov 2024
November 2024
News - Research & Events News - News & Views Articles - They’re burning the labs... Spotlight Features - Incubators, Freezers & Cooling Equipment - Pumps, Valves & Liquid Hand...
View all digital editions
Events
Nov 18 2024 Shanghai, China
Nov 20 2024 Karachi, Pakistan
Nov 27 2024 Istanbul, Turkey
Jan 22 2025 Tokyo, Japan
Jan 22 2025 Birmingham, UK