Prostate cancer commonly shows up with men after the age of 50. But a scary issue is that African American men are twice as likely to die from it.
A huge study has been launched to find the link between prostate cancer and African men. About 10000 men have signed up to take part in the study, which is a sign of the major support for this study.
This study can knock out two birds with one stone, maybe even more than that. There are plans to have data on African men with prostate cancer to have a better overview of the disease. Samples of their DNA will be taken to start off this process.
Often times when studies like this are conducted they are heavily leaned to white people (men specifically) and that narrows the studies too much to have any type of good data.
Looking further into detail of why and how African men have such a higher risk than white men, researches want to know their lifestyle. Things like what they eat, where they live, and what types of things stress them and how often it stresses them out, etc. For many years it’s been clear that the death rates for any type of cancer is highest among African Americans. Looking at this data shows that its not entirely genetic reasons for this outcome but more so in social and economical reasons.
When diagnosed with prostate cancer, a lot of men are given treatments that are unnecessarily strong or over the top. No matter what race it is, it happens too often that there are possibly life-changing treatments that are not needed yet still given to insignificant diagnoses.
There is a distrust that African Americans have with researches because of horrible events that have happened in the past. It makes having participants and data for the group much harder to have because there is never enough evidence to come to a conclusion in the studies. Luckily for this 5-year period 10000 men have participated and new data is on its way. The men are eager to have participated and help with their community.
A couple years ago, screening for prostate cancer was not as stressed as it is now, of the 50000 deaths a year caused by prostate cancer, 14000 could have been prevented. Men with prostate cancer can end up developing colon cancer making, causing avoidable death if screening was stressed before.
Fortunately screening frequency has gone up and statistics are showing a significant rise in survival rates. Although prostate still remains the second leading cause of death in the US, the death rate slowly declines and survival rates are stacking up. Thanks to health organizations and other food outlets it’s become easier for people to become aware of what foods would increase their risk for the cancer.
Prevention is getting better and better and its easier to get an early detection with the improvement or new advancements within the screenings. Prevention is also merged with eating habits or diets, increasing or decreasing certain vitamins and avoiding certain foods.
