Health : Health Buzz: Smoking Linked to Deadlier Prostate Cancer |
| Health Buzz: Smoking Linked to Deadlier Prostate Cancer Posted: 22 Jun 2011 08:00 AM PDT Study: Smokers at Risk for Deadly Prostate Cancer Smoking may make prostate cancer deadlier. Men who are smokers at the time of diagnosis are more likely to see a recurrence after treatment and to die of the disease, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers spent an average of eight years following 5,366 men who'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1986 and 2006. Compared with never-smokers, current smokers had a 61 percent increased risk of cancer recurrence and a 61 percent increased risk of dying of the disease. Pack-a-day smokers with the longest habit tended to develop the most aggressive cases and were most likely to succumb to the disease. Those who quit smoking at least a decade before diagnosis, however, appeared to avoid the increased risk, according to the study. "[These] data suggest that smokers develop cancers that are more likely to kill them," Joshi Alumkal, a prostate cancer specialist at Oregon Health and Science University, told Health.com. Alumkal was not involved with the study. "Smoking is a key factor that determines how aggressive prostate cancer will be."
11 Things to Know About Prostate Cancer Men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer know choosing the right treatment can be difficult. Consult five doctors, and you may well get five starkly different recommendations. A report released in 2008 by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality identified the source of the confusion: Reliable scientific evidence on the effectiveness and harms of the differing treatment options is sorely lacking. Below are 11 kernels of information drawn from the report that men should be aware of before choosing a prostate cancer treatment. Don't stop with these, however. Anyone pondering any of the treatments the report covers would do well to read its findings carefully. It reviews all of the available scientific evidence—the authors considered 592 published articles—on the effectiveness and potential harms of eight widely used treatment strategies: radical prostatectomy, external beam radiotherapy (including intensity-modulated radiation therapy and proton beam therapy), brachytherapy, cryoablation, androgen deprivation therapy, watchful waiting, robotic prostatectomy, and high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy. The hard truth, it concludes, is that reliable evidence simply doesn't exist to show that any of these treatments are more effective at curing cancer or less harmful than the others. Men with cancer already know, however, that intense marketing and promotion efforts by the organizations that make the various treatments possible—be they trade associations, individual companies, medical associations, or individual physicians—often tell a much rosier story. In this case, none of the report's authors report any potential financial conflicts of interest. A rare find, in a field notorious for them. What you need to know: 1. It isn't clear that aggressively treating prostate cancer saves lives. One study shows that men under 65 who choose surgery over watchful waiting, for example, are less likely to die or have their cancer spread. However, since PSA tests were not used to initially detect the cancer, it isn't known if this finding applies to men whose cancer are detected through PSA screening (today, the vast majority of cancers are detected this way, and it's likely that cancers found via PSA screening have different natural progressions from those detected via rectal exam). Another smaller study showed no difference in survival between surgery and watchful waiting. [Read more: 11 Things to Know About Prostate Cancer.] What Causes Cancer? 7 Strange Cancer Claims Explained Bras, deodorant, and mouthwash—just a few of the everyday products that have been linked to cancer at some point during the past several decades. Preposterous? Not at the time, and new suspects have been added to the list. Here's the real story behind a roll call of ordinary household items that have come under scrutiny: 1. Artificial Sweeteners. The link: Calorie watchers scored a win when diet sodas were introduced in the early 1950s. Then lab studies suggested that the sweetener cyclamate caused bladder cancer in rats, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned its use. Then saccharin, the replacement of choice, was also shown to cause tumors in rats. Although saccharin was never banned, all products containing the sweetener were required to carry a cancer warning on their packaging. The reality: No evidence has since emerged that either cyclamate, which is used in other countries, or saccharin causes cancer in humans, according to the National Cancer Institute. Although cyclamate is still banned, in 2000 saccharin was taken off the government's list of possible carcinogens and saccharin products shed the warning label. The sweetener aspartame has come under suspicion, but scientists have found no increased risk of cancer in humans. [Read more: What Causes Cancer? 7 Strange Cancer Claims Explained.]
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