Black men have higher rates of prostate cancer
Bald men may be beautiful, but losing hair early could raise the risk for prostate cancer, especially in African-American men, according to a recent study from the American Association for Cancer Research.
The study, which appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, looked at more than 300 African-American men with prostate cancer and more than 200 controls between 1998 and 2010. The men had either a full head of hair or frontal baldness.
“We focused on African-American men because they are at high risk for developing prostate cancer and are more than twice as likely to die from prostate cancer than other groups in the United States,” said Charnita Zeigler-Johnson, Ph.D., research assistant professor at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a press release. “Although this is a high-risk group for poor prostate cancer outcomes, no published study had focused on evaluating baldness as a potential risk factor in a sample of African-American men.”
The results: Men with any baldness had a 69 percent increased risk of prostate cancer. Those with frontal baldness had more than double the risk for advanced prostate cancer diagnosis. The risk was even stronger among African-American men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer before age 60.
“Early-onset baldness may be a risk factor for early-onset prostate cancer in African-American men, particularly younger men,” Zeigler-Johnson said in the release.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and it is the second most common cause of death. African-American men have higher rates than men of other races.
