Prostate Cancer Outcomes Determined By Socioeconomic Status

More than the available treatment methods, it is the socioeconomic status of an individual that determines the prognosis of prostate cancer, according to a new study published in the March 15, 2006 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

The study found that education, community poverty, and income level played an equally important role in determining the outcomes as did age, disease stage, and treatment method. Prostate cancer is generally a slow growing malignancy and usually has very good prognosis, but it has shown racial predilection as far as mortality rate is concerned, affecting African-Americans more than Caucasians. In the current study, Xianglin L. Du, Ph.D., of the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, and colleagues reviewed the case histories of 61,228 men aged 65 years or older who were diagnosed over a period of 11 years. The reserachers found that the level of education, level of poverty in the community, and income played a significant role in the survival rate. The report also