Exercise may reduce, and even reverse, bone loss caused by hormone and radiation therapies used in the therapy of localized prostate cancer, thereby decreasing the potential risk of bone fractures and improving quality of life for these men, as per a research studypresented on October 28, 2007, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncologys 49th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.
Patients with prostate cancer are not routinely advised to exercise. Walking is one tool that patients with prostate cancer can use to improve their health and minimize the side effects of cancer and cancer therapys, said Paula Chiplis, PhD., RN, the lead author of the study and a clinical instructor and senior research assistant at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Walking has no harmful side effects, if done moderately, but it can dramatically improve life for men suffering from side effects from some prostate cancer therapys.
Findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists encourage men to weigh both the potential benefits and side effects of the drug finasteride before taking it to prevent prostate cancer.
In todays online issue of Cancer, UT Southwestern doctors analyzed data gathered by the National Cancer Institutes Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, or PCPT. The trial, which began in October 1993, was designed to test whether finasteride could prevent prostate cancer in men 55 years of age and older. It was stopped early in June 2003 when an analysis showed that finasteride reduced the risk of developing prostate cancer by 25 percent.
Cadmium exposure is a known risk factor for prostate cancer, and a new University of Rochester study suggests that zinc may offer protection against cadmium.
In an article reported in the February 2008 journal, The Prostate, epidemiologist Edwin van Wijngaarden, Ph.D., reports that PSA levels were 22 percent higher among American men who had zinc levels below the median (less than 12.67 mg/daily) and cadmium levels above the median. (PSA is a protein produced by the cells of the prostate gland. The higher a mans PSA level, the more likely cancer is present.) .
In contrast, among men with a greater than median zinc intake, little evidence of an association between cadmium and PSA was found.