Re: Testosterone Doesn't Affect Prostate Cancer Risk
- From: El Castor <No_One@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:53:03 -0800
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:41:19 -0800, sordo@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Testosterone Doesn't Affect Prostate Cancer Risk
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:02 AM
Natural levels of a man's testosterone do not affect his prostate cancer
risk as some had thought, a finding that should spur scientists to
rethink their approach to the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.
Nearly two dozen studies have examined a potential link between
testosterone and prostate cancer risk but so far results have been
inconclusive, said Andrew Roddam, an epidemiologist at the University of
Oxford who led the study.
Writing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Roddam and
colleagues said they found no such relationship after collecting
worldwide data on hormone levels of 3,886 men who eventually developed
prostate cancer and 6,438 men who did not.
Prostate cancer, which usually occurs in older men, is the second most
common cause of cancer death among men after lung cancer. The prostate
is a walnut-sized gland that makes fluid for semen.
"We looked at blood samples of men before they had cancer and men who
didn't develop cancer to see if their hormone levels were different,"
Roddam said in a telephone interview.
"When you compare these two groups there is no substantial relationship
between hormone levels and their risk of developing the disease."
Testosterone is the primary "male" hormone that helps maintain muscle
mass and strength, fat distribution, bone mass, sperm production, sex
drive and potency. Women have testosterone too, but at lower levels.
The hormone's role in men's health is controversial, with the
relationship between men's natural testosterone levels and overall
health not well understood, researchers say.
The reason scientists had believed it played a role in raising prostate
cancer risk was because testosterone makes a tumor grow, and which is
why some treatments seek to block the hormone.
A study last year also showed that higher naturally occurring levels of
testosterone appeared to protect men from fatal heart attacks or strokes
and death from several causes.
The latest findings, however, should prod researchers to shift the focus
of their research into new risk factors for the disease, Paul Godley and
colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said in a
commentary.
"The study obliges the scientific community to move past a seductive,
clinically relevant, and biologically plausible hypothesis and get on
with the difficult task of exploring, analyzing, and characterizing
modifiable risk factors for prostate cancer," they wrote.
© 2008 Reuters.
Interesting, but not a green light to take synthetic testosterone.
.
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