As I was reading this article at the Guardian on a combined therapy for advanced prostate cancer, I was struck by this statement:
More than 27,000 men in the US and 11,000 men in the UK die of prostate cancer each year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prostate Cancer UK.
To put that in some perspective, the U. S. population is about five times that of the U. K. That tells us that the mortality rate due to prostate cancer in the U. K. is about twice what it is here. That’s a big difference.
This study suggests that genetic differences give us at least part of the explanation. I wish that there were better data for West Africa (this study gives us a few tantalizing hints). This study is interesting, too, fortifying the idea of a genetic basis.
So, why is the mortality rate due to prostate cancer so high in the U. K. relative to the U. S.?
- Genetics
- Health care
- Diet
- All of the above
- None of the above
Prostate cancer is a very slow killer. In the US, we often don’t operate on it, because we figure the men will die of other things first.
I don’t know what the UK does, but it’s possible that they are keeping their old men alive a bit longer, and prostate cancer is winning the race more often, rather than that their men’s prostates are more cancerous.
Cold be a lot of reasons, but off the top of my head, based upon some real literature and some educated guesswork.
1) Life expectancy is the UK if about 2 1/2 years longer. Prostate cancer is really an old age cancer. If you live long enough, and are male, you probably get prostate cancer. So in the UK, everyone gets care. Fewer die early from heart disease or other preventable causes but eventually succumb to prostate CA. Or looked at another way, we in the US die early from other diseases and don’t live long enough die from prostate CA.
2) Most prostate CA is slow growing and not very aggressive. By report, the Brits engage in more watchful waiting. In the US almost everyone gets in immediate intervention, often surgery. Some people die from the complications o surgery, so they don’t go on to die from prostate CA.
3) Warm beer. Yuck!
4) Cant rule out genetics. I just don’t know that area as it pertains to prostate CA.
Steve
In defense of English beer:
On the other hand I grew up in St. Louis where they drink beer colder than probably anywhere else in the world. If the beer you were most likely to encounter were Budweiser, you’d drink it as cold as you could get it, too.
I never got into the bitters, but loved the ales while I lived there.
Here’s another theory for prostate cancer: Kabobs and vindaloo.
Somw research suggests an inverse relationship between frequency of ejaculation and chance of developing prostate cancer. Maybe Brits don’t get their jollies often enough.