Obesity Complicates The Detection Of Prostate Cancer!

According to a new study in the presence of overweight or obese patient standard methods of screening for prostate cancer may not detect dangerous pathology. This is the risk that the doctor simply overlooking, the cancer early, dooming the patient's suffering.

For the 2001 - 2004 years, scientists from the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio studied 2,779 men without prostate cancer. As it turned out than obese men, the lower the content of his blood prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a reliable marker for prostate cancer. Typically, the PSA level less than 4.0 units, and this means that there is no cancer.

Further worsens the situation is the fact that prostate cancer in men occurs more thick malignant. It is quite possible that this is due to increased malignancy is more recent discovery of the tumor. PSA for prostate cancer in obese patients with an average of 30% lower. The researchers hope that the study will make doctors more closely examine obese patients for prostate cancer, especially with regard to the interpretation of PSA testing in the blood. Thus, obese men sensitivity of detection of PSA in the diagnosis of prostate cancer is reduced. So, the doctor should never rely solely on technology, one can not "overlook" this pathology.

Antigen concentration in the blood is determined in the analysis produced by normal prostate cells. The higher the PSA, the more likely that cancer cells divide uncontrollably, and this is the first step to cancer, and he may have actually. The diagnosis of prostate cancer can not be placed solely on the basis of indicators of PSA, as recommended by the American oncologists and urologists need biopsy tissue cancer.

In addition, the issue of cancer, "the President's cancer", so it is called by the people, must take account of these previous studies, that is, even with normal PSA levels in 15% of cases could be cancer, and in 66% of these patients, an aggressive malignant form.

The scientists who conducted the study, do not explain why obese patients with prostate cancer, the PSA level below. Most likely, this is due to the fact that obese men produce more estrogen, which suppresses testosterone and thus affects the cells that produce the antigen.