African American men with clinical chronic prostatitis have lower risk of prostate cancer

According to a new study, African American men with clinical chronic prostatitis have a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States, behind lung cancer. It is also the most common type of cancer in men other than skin cancer. And according to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, African-American men are nearly 1.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than Caucasian men and 2.4 times more likely to die from the disease.

"African-American men have the highest risk of developing prostate cancer, compared all other races," says Dr. David Samadi. "They also often have more aggressive prostate cancers."

Researchers at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit analyzed data from 574 prostate cancer case-control pairs. This included 345 white males and 229 African American males. According to the researchers, African American men with clinical chronic prostatitis had a 53 percent lower risk of prostate cancer compared to African American men without prostatitis.

Overall, clinical prostatitis did not significantly increase prostate cancer risk in white men. However, "it was associated with a significant 3.5 times increased risk in those who had no evidence of histologic prostatic inflammation. The researchers also found that clinical prostatitis increased prostate cancer risk almost 3-fold in white men with a low PSA velocity and nearly 2-fold in white men with more frequent PSA testing."

According to the study authors, "Prostatitis is a biologically and clinically heterogeneous condition; as a result, determining its role in prostate carcinogenesis is challenging. As clinically-reported prostatitis is more likely when the underlying prostatic inflammation is extensive, the factors that influence the spread of prostatic inflammation, and how these factors may promote carcinogenesis need to be better understood."