Study results show baldness elevated risk 69%
In a recent study, baldness in African-American men raised the risk of prostate cancer, and advanced prostate cancer risk increased with younger patients and baldness type.
Charnita Zeigler-Johnson, PhD, research assistant professor at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia said, “We focused on African-American men because they are at high risk for developing prostate cancer and are more than twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as other groups in the United States.”
Among participants who enrolled in the Study of Clinical Outcomes, Risk and Ethnicity between 1998 and 2010, Zeigler-Johnson and her colleagues identified 318 African-American men with prostate cancer and 219 African-American men as controls.
Study results showed that any type of baldness was linked with a 69% increased prostate cancer risk. An advanced prostate cancer diagnosis was twice as likely among study participants with frontal baldness (not vertex baldness). Furthermore, high-stage prostate cancer was 6 times more likely and high-grade prostate cancer was 4 times more likely among men younger than 60 years who were diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Source: AACR.