Link Between Smoking and Prostate Cancer
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Men with prostate cancer might want to think twice before they light up a cigarette. A new study shows prostate cancer patients who smoke increase their risk of cancer recurrence and death from the disease.
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States and is the second-leading cause of cancer death among men in this country. The disease affects one in six men during their lifetime.
Researchers studied 5,366 men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1986 and 2006. They documented 1,630 deaths and found men with prostate cancer who were current smokers had a 61-percent increased risk of dying from prostate cancer. These patients also had a 61-percent higher risk of recurrence when compared to men who never smoked.
Smoking was also linked to a more aggressive disease at diagnosis, which was defined as a higher clinical stage Gleason grade (a measure of prostate cancer severity). Men with non-metastatic disease at diagnosis who smoked had an 80-percent increased risk of dying from prostate cancer.
The encouraging news was that compared to current smokers, men with prostate cancer who had quit smoking for 10 or more years or who had quit for less than 10 years but smoked less than 20 pack-years before diagnosis, had a prostate cancer mortality risk that was similar to those who had never smoked. However, men who had quit smoking for less than 10 years and had smoked 20 or more pack-years had risks that were similar to the current smokers.
"These data are exciting because there are few known ways for a man to reduce his risk of dying from prostate cancer," senior author Edward Giovannucci, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH, was quoted as saying. "For smokers, quitting can impact their risk of dying from prostate cancer. This is another reason to not smoke."
SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, June 22-29, 2011
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