the PSA threshold for initiating a biopsy should be lowered

More research which shows the danger of obesity when it comes to diagnosis for prostate cancer has been published by the medical journal BJU International. Ukmedix News has previously written about a study done by the National Cancer Institute of the United States which shows that men who are obese when they are diagnosed with cancer of the prostate are more likely to die from the disease.

This new research give some indication as to why this is the case by explaining that obese men take longer to be diagnosed because the prostate-specific antigen screening (PSA)  tends to be biased against men with obesity giving them reduced PSA levels which is caused by hemodilution due to a larger plasma volume.

The researchers led by Dr. Stephen J. Freedland at the Duke University Medical Centre in Durham, North Carolina examined data from over 3300 men who had agreed to take part in the Shared Equal Access Regional Cancer Hospital (SEARCH) and Duke Prostate Centre databases. Dr. Freedland recommended that the PSA threshold for initiating a biopsy should be lowered when the man in question was obese.

Another finding was that obesity tended to make surgical intervention to the prostate more complicated and thus the risk of surgery was greater for them. A high BMI was linked with higher likelihood of “positive surgical margins” at all the anatomical locations and the extra risk was almost 50% in men with a BMI of just over 30 and a huge 128% for men who were classed as “moderately or severely” obese.  The researchers advised that additional care should be taken by surgeons when operating in the prostate area on men who suffered from obesity.

Obesity is also responsible for increasing the risk of many different types of cancer in both men and women and this is something that many individuals are unaware of. Not only are you more likely to get almost all types of cancer by being obese but you are statistically more likely to die from it.