How Common Is Prostate Cancer at Different Ages?

If you're curious about prostate cancer rates, you may be wondering if prostate cancer risk increases with age. The answer is yes. Before the age of 40, it is uncommon, but prevalence increases rapidly in men over age 40 -- and continues to rise thereafter.

How Do We Know the True Prevalence of Prostate Cancer?

The only way to definitively diagnose prostate cancer is by taking some of the prostate tissue and looking at it under a microscope to determine if any cancerous cells are present.
This is mostly done with prostate biopsy when there is some reason to be concerned that prostate cancer may be present (such as an elevated PSA level, an abnormal digital rectal exam, or urinary symptoms).

In order to determine how common prostate cancer truly is, however, biopsies would have to be done on lots and lots of men -- regardless of whether they needed it or not. This plan obviously has some serious drawbacks and will likely never be done.
Instead, prostate tissue can be analyzed after death during an autopsy. It is through autopsy studies that scientists have been able to determine the actual prevalence of prostate cancer among men of various ages.

Prostate Cancer Rates by Age

One project that analyzed autopsy studies from around the world came to the following conclusion regarding the actual rate of prostate cancer in men of different ages:

• 20 to 30 years, 2% to 8%
• 31 to 40 years: 9% to 31%
• 41 to 50 years: 3% to 43%
• 51 to 60 years: 5% to 46%
• 61 to 70 years: 14% to 70%
• 71 to 80 years: 31% to 83%
• 81 to 90 years: 40% to 73%

Obviously, some of these age ranges show a large degree of variability in the prevalence of cancer. This variability is thought to be due to differences in the diagnostic techniques used by the various pathologists and to geographic differences. (Men in some parts of the world have much higher rates of prostate cancer than others.)

Overall, though, this gives a pretty good picture of just how common prostate cancer is and how dramatically its prevalence increases with age.

_Sources:

Delongchamps NB, Singh A, Haas GP. The role of prevalence in the diagnosis of prostate cancer. Cancer Control. 2006 Jul;13(3):158-68.
Hankey BF, Feuer EJ, Clegg LX, et al. Cancer surveillance series: interpreting trends in prostate cancer--part I: Evidence of the effects of screening in recent prostate cancer incidence, mortality, and survival rates. J Natl Cancer Inst 1999 Jun 16;91(12):1017-24.

Do Metabolic Factors Increase Mortality in Prostate Cancer?

Hello. I am Dr. Gerald Chodak for Medscape. Today's topic is the role of metabolic syndrome in men with prostate cancer. Haggstrom and coworkers ^[1] published in Cancer a large cohort series on nearly 300,000 men who were followed over a course of about 12 years.

What they attempted to determine was whether having symptoms of metabolic syndrome was associated with an increased risk of developing prostate cancer. The authors found no such association. However, they did find that men who had metabolic syndrome were more likely to be dying from prostate cancer, the risk for which was associated with elevated body mass index, elevated blood pressure, or abnormal glucose or triglyceride blood levels.

The significance of this is the following. We know that many men who progress from prostate cancer are likely to develop metabolic syndrome as a consequence of androgen deprivation. Although we are getting better at treating men with progressive metastatic prostate cancer, the fact is that we may be falling far short of addressing potentially resolvable problems that contribute to their overall death.
I don't think that urologists are primed for evaluating patients for metabolic syndrome, monitoring it, or ensuring that patients are getting the care that they need to make sure that the syndrome is being addressed. What does that mean going forward? First, we need to alert our patients to these side effects and symptoms, encouraging them to try to moderate their weight, get exercise, monitor their glucose levels, get their blood pressure managed properly, and address triglyceride levels that may be abnormal.

That may be outside the realm of the urologist. However, it does require careful attention, and urologists need to do a better job of ensuring that their patients with progressive prostate cancer are receiving care in the area of addressing metabolic syndrome. That means that not only is better patient education needed, but physicians need to be tuned in to the seriousness of these side effects. As urologists, we tend to think more about the cancer with blinders on and don't address the peripheral association that happens as a result of the treatments that we administer.

But it is becoming clearer all the time that metabolic syndrome is serious. It contributes to the mortality of men with prostate cancer and, more than likely, there is a great opportunity for improving the management of our patients to address some of these problems. Hopefully you will find this information useful. I look forward to your comments. Thank you.

Do Metabolic Factors Increase Mortality in Prostate Cancer?

Hello. I am Dr. Gerald Chodak for Medscape. Today's topic is the role of metabolic syndrome in men with prostate cancer. Haggstrom and coworkers ^[1] published in Cancer a large cohort series on nearly 300,000 men who were followed over a course of about 12 years.

What they attempted to determine was whether having symptoms of metabolic syndrome was associated with an increased risk of developing prostate cancer. The authors found no such association. However, they did find that men who had metabolic syndrome were more likely to be dying from prostate cancer, the risk for which was associated with elevated body mass index, elevated blood pressure, or abnormal glucose or triglyceride blood levels.

The significance of this is the following. We know that many men who progress from prostate cancer are likely to develop metabolic syndrome as a consequence of androgen deprivation. Although we are getting better at treating men with progressive metastatic prostate cancer, the fact is that we may be falling far short of addressing potentially resolvable problems that contribute to their overall death.
I don't think that urologists are primed for evaluating patients for metabolic syndrome, monitoring it, or ensuring that patients are getting the care that they need to make sure that the syndrome is being addressed. What does that mean going forward? First, we need to alert our patients to these side effects and symptoms, encouraging them to try to moderate their weight, get exercise, monitor their glucose levels, get their blood pressure managed properly, and address triglyceride levels that may be abnormal.

That may be outside the realm of the urologist. However, it does require careful attention, and urologists need to do a better job of ensuring that their patients with progressive prostate cancer are receiving care in the area of addressing metabolic syndrome. That means that not only is better patient education needed, but physicians need to be tuned in to the seriousness of these side effects. As urologists, we tend to think more about the cancer with blinders on and don't address the peripheral association that happens as a result of the treatments that we administer.

But it is becoming clearer all the time that metabolic syndrome is serious. It contributes to the mortality of men with prostate cancer and, more than likely, there is a great opportunity for improving the management of our patients to address some of these problems. Hopefully you will find this information useful. I look forward to your comments. Thank you.