Originally published February 3 2005
Obesity may lead to inaccurate negative tests for prostate cancer
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Obese men who get an "all clear" after a test for prostate cancer may be in for a surprise, a new report says. Obesity, it seems, might interfere with the standard prostate cancer screening procedures and lead to inaccurate negative tests. Doctors have already begun trying to solve the problem. In the meantime, some say this may the reason obese men are more likely than other groups to die from prostate cancer.
Obese men may get falsely reassuring results on prostate cancer screening tests, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said obesity was associated with lower prostate specific antigen or PSA levels in men, which in turn could give men a lower reading on the PSA test that is widely used to screen for prostate cancer.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer, may help explain why obese men seem to be more likely to die of prostate cancer.
Jacques Baillargeon and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio studied 2,779 men to see if having a lot of body fat somehow affected the sensitivity of PSA tests.
It could help explain "the recent reports of inferior outcomes of prostate cancer treatment in obese men," they wrote.
Prostate cancer is by far the most common cancer among U.S. men, and will affect 232,090 men this year and kill 30,350, according to American Cancer Society predictions.
The death rate has fallen since widespread use of the PSA test, which finds in the blood a protein produced only by prostate cells, and over-produced by prostate cancer cells.
But it is unclear whether screening or better treatments are responsible for better survival.
Higher PSA readings are a pointer to possible prostate cancer, although not definitive proof of cancer.
One-third of all Americans are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or more or, roughly, being 20 percent above a healthy weight.
Fatter men have a one-third higher risk of prostate cancer, the American Cancer Society says, and obese men tend to be diagnosed when their cancer is more advanced and they are more at risk of dying from it.
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