Prostate Cancer Essay
Prostate Cancer
Prostate Cancer is a malignancy of the prostate gland, a walnut-sized organ located under the bladder in males. The prostate gland surrounds the urethra, which is the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the penis. The American Cancer Society estimates that 317,100 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed annually in the United States and that 41,400 men die from the disease each year. It is the second leading cause of cancer death after lung cancer in American men.
The specific causes and development of prostate cancer are still unknown, but several risk factors for the disease are known. The older you are, the higher chance of getting the disease is. Prostate cancer usually doesn’t develop before the age of 40 and is mostly found in men over the age of 65. It is common in North America affecting 15 percent of American men in their lifetimes and in northwestern Europe, but rare in South America, the Near East, and Africa. In America, black males suffer from the disease 37 percent more often than white males. Evidence links diets with a lot of animal fats with prostate cancer. One study found that human prostate cancer tumors grew only half as fast in mice with diets of 21 percent fat as in mice with diets of 40 percent fat. Diet differences are believed to explain why prostate cancer is 120 times greater in the United States than in China, where fatty foods are not part of the general diet.
Some foods seem to act as a shield against this disease. A nine-year study published in 1995 suggests that tomato products protect against prostate cancer, possibly because tomatoes are rich in a substance called lycopene. Lycopene is an antioxidant, a chemical that messes up the cellular process of oxidation. Too much cellular oxidation can be dangerous to a person’s health because it produces molecules called free radicals that increase the risk of cancer developing in body tissues.
Environmental factors, such as workplace exposures to cadmium, have also been associated with increased risk of prostate cancer. Family history plays another important role. Men whose fathers or brothers develop prostate cancer are more likely to develop the disease. Researchers are beginning to identify genetic markers of prostate cancer. For instance, hereditary prostate cancer (HPC1), a gene detected in 1996, appears to significantly predispose men to prostate cancer when inherited in a mutated form.
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