So if you are a male and you are concerned about preventive health and preventing cancer, what can you do to prevent prostate cancer, so events you cannot prevent having a family history or being of African-American descent but what I tell my patients is dietary factors are important and we know that diets that are high in saturated fats do put you at higher risk for developing prostate cancer. So what I will tell my patients is heart-healthy is prostate healthy. You should exercise. Keep your weight down in a healthy range and that all is good for you. As far as preventive measures, I tell my patients that they should take a daily baby aspirin.
There is strong evidence that taking a baby aspirin can prevent not only prostate cancer but colon cancer. It is known that it can prevent heart attack and stroke, but before doing this, you should consult with your family doctor if it is okay for you to take a baby aspirin. I do tell most of my patients to do that. Certain drugs have been looked at as possible preventive measures for prostate cancer and specifically Avodart or dutasteride and Proscar or finasteride, which are drugs that are FDA approved for enlargement of the prostate. These drugs block the conversion of testosterone to the more active form dihydrotestosterone and can shrink the size of the prostate up to 27%.
The PCPT study was used to look at the prevention of prostate cancer using finasteride and in fact, in a large-scale study, it did show a reduction in the incidents of prostate cancer in those men who took finasteride.
There was about a 25% reduction in the incidents of prostate cancer, however, some of these patients who did develop prostate cancer and took finasteride to appear to develop a higher grade prostate cancer and we are not sure about the significance of that. I do counsel my patients that taking these pills may prevent prostate cancer, but I do not routinely use these to prevent prostate cancer. Many of my patients will ask me about ejaculation and its impact on preventing prostate cancer and what I say to them is that there is no solid data that supports or refutes ejaculation frequency of being linked to prostate cancer.
So intuitively what I say to them is the prostate is a secretory organ that makes semen and it cannot be bad or harmful to ejaculate more frequently.
Some prostate cancers are high risk, aggressive, and more likely to spread. Others are low risk, least likely to have bad outcomes. The biopsy says cancer, but correct diagnostic tools provide limited information about how aggressive a man’s individual disease is, so most men decide to treat prostate cancer immediately. Once treated, many men experience serious long-term side effects, like incontinence and sexual impotence. Immediate treatment is not always needed, but right now a man cannot be sure if his cancer is the kind that is likely to require treatment or if he is okay to wait for now.
What if there was a test that could determine how aggressive prostate cancer is? Genomic Health is developing a new test to do just that.
By reviewing the underlying biology of the tumor and using genes for multiple biologic pathways, the test can predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer when diagnosed, allowing a man to make a more informed treatment decision with confidence, taking care of himself with more information, and greater peace of mind…
