How common is prostate cancer? Too common. In the United States, a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer every three minutes. Every fifteen minutes, a man dies of it. A boy born today has a 13 percent chance of developing prostate cancer, and a 3 percent chance of dying of it.
Scientists don’t know precisely what causes prostate cancer, but it’s clear that a number of factors are involved. First and foremost are age and hormones. Prostate cancer hardly ever develops before age 40; it becomes more common with every decade afterward. Also, it rarely develops in men who are castrated before puberty.
Genetic factors also play a role. Does prostate cancer run in your family? If your father or brother has prostate cancer, your risk of developing it is two times greater than the average American man’s. Families with prostate cancer in three or more first-degree relatives (father or brother), or prostate cancer in three generations (grandfather, father, son) have a hereditary form of the disease. The significance of this is that, in these families, men have a 50 percent risk of developing the disease. Also, it’s more likely to strike at a younger age—when a man might not even be looking for trouble or having yearly prostate exams.
What about environment? Clinically significant prostate cancer is rare in men who live in China or Japan. But when these men move to Hawaii or California, their rate of prostate cancer escalates—to the level of an American man’s. The high-fat Western diet looms as an obvious environmental culprit, but it’s not that simple. Other factors, such as vitamin A and exposure to ultraviolet light — which increases the body’s levels of vitamin D—are important in determining which men develop prostate cancer.
As scientists learn more about what causes prostate cancer, per someday we’ll be able to turn this knowledge into positive actions— so that, maybe, one day, prostate cancer will be preventable.
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