Prostate Cancer Canada

Risk Factors

Age
Diet
Environmental Factors
Family History
Ethnicity / Nationality
Weight

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In The News

Prostate Cancer Awareness Day at BC Legislative Assembly
VICTORIA, May 4, 2012- On Monday, May 7, Prostate Cancer Canada (PCC) will host their first Legislative Assembly Day to promote education and awareness of prostate cancer in British Columbia.

Media Advisory - Prostate Cancer Canada celebrates local Halifax hero
HALIFAX, April 25, 2012 /CNW/ - Please join Prostate Cancer Canada and members of the Halifax business community as we celebrate a local hero who has made an extraordinary contribution in the fight against prostate cancer through courage, inspiration and dedication.

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Ethnicity / Nationality

A man’s chances of being diagnosed with prostate cancer can be very different depending on his ethnicity and the country he lives in. The disease is most common and deadly among those of African or Caribbean descent, followed (in order) by white non-Hispanics, white Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans.

To put it in perspective: those of African or Caribbean descent are 65 per cent more likely to develop prostate cancer than Caucasian-American men, and the risk of a man of African or Caribbean descent dying of prostate cancer is about 100 times that of a Chinese man living in China.

That last phrase, "a Chinese man living in China," is important. Asian men living in Asia have low rates of prostate cancer, but their risk of the disease rises the longer they live in Western cultures. Diet, genetics and lack of vitamin D may play roles in these racial / national differences.

Several genes that put men at a greater risk of developing prostate cancer are found more predominately in Blacks than Caucasians, and in Caucasians more than Asians. A nation-wide study is being carried out by the African-American Hereditary Prostate Cancer Study Network to find the genes that put Black men at higher risk and to determine if heredity plays in a role in the higher incidence of the disease in Blacks.

There are also small differences in hormone levels like testosterone between races, which may predispose some groups to the disease.

Prostate cancer rates are highest in Scandinavian countries (22 cases per 100,000 population) and lowest in Asia (5 per 100,000). This difference may be the result of different amounts of exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D.