When it comes to prostate cancer, there are many questions about it: How to prevent it? How can it be detected early? Is there the most effective way to cure it? And is treatment necessary? The following research from scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center provides information on six common misconceptions about prostate cancer to help people sort out the facts from the rumors. Myth No. 1 – Eating ketchup and spaghetti sauce tomato-based foods can prevent prostate cancer, says Dr. Alan Kristal, deputy director of the Hutchinson Center’s Cancer Prevention Program and a national prostate cancer prevention panel. There’s no link between the two.” Kristal and colleagues last year published the results of one of the largest studies to date on whether foods containing lycopene, a nutrient that makes tomatoes red, actually prevent prostate cancer. They found no association by testing lycopene levels in the blood of 3,500 men nationwide. In the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the authors state that “scientists and the public should understand that the earlier studies of a link between dietary lycopene and a reduced risk of prostate cancer cannot be replicated in future studies using serum biomarkers of lycopene intake. .” “The professional society’s recommendation to the public should be modified to state that increased lycopene intake may not be associated with prostate cancer risk. Misconception No. 2-High levels of testosterone increase the risk of prostate cancer,” Kristal said. “This is a very cute hypothesis – based on a very simple understanding of the metabolism of testosterone and its effect on prostate cancer – that is unfortunately wrong. ” Unlike the strong link between estrogen and breast cancer, there is no link between testosterone levels and prostate cancer risk, he said. A 2008 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a top international journal, combined data from 18 large studies and found no link between serum testosterone concentrations and prostate cancer risk, and recent studies have further confirmed this conclusion. Myth No. 3 – Cod liver oil (omega-3 fatty acids) can reduce prostate cancer risk, Kristal says. “Based on the link between prostate cancer and inflammation and the anti-inflammatory effects of omega-3 fatty acids, this sounds reasonable.” Yet two well-designed, large studies (one of which was led by Kristal and published last year in the American Journal of Epidemiology) suggest that high levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood can instead increase the risk of prostate cancer. Analyzing data from nearly 3,500 men from around the world, they found that those with the highest percentage of fatty acids in their blood docosahexaenoic acid (or DHA, an Omega-3 fatty acid that reduces the inflammatory response and is found primarily in fish) had 2.5 times the risk of aggressive, high-grade prostate cancer than those with the lowest percentage of DHA. “This surprising finding suggests that we don’t fully understand the role of Omega-3 fatty acids,” he said. Myth No. 4 – Dietary supplements can prevent prostate cancer. Several large, randomized clinical trials have studied the effects of dietary supplements on a variety of cancers, including prostate cancer; the results show either no effect or a significant effect – or, worryingly, a significant increase in risk,” Kristal says. ” For example, the largest prostate cancer prevention study to date: the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Clinical Trial (SELECT) was earlier called off because neither selenium or vitamin E supplementation alone nor in combination had any effect on reducing the risk of prostate cancer. A selective follow-up study published last year in JAMA found that vitamin E actually increased the risk of prostate cancer in healthy men, and the Hutchinson Center reviewed the analysis of data from the study, which included nearly 35,000 men from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Myth No. 5 – We don’t know which prostate cancers screened for by PSA (prostate-specific antigen) need to be treated and which don’t. Dr. Ruth Etzioni, a biostatistician and member of the Hutchinson Center’s Department of Public Health Sciences, says, “The truth is, we know exactly which cancers are less likely to be malignant and which ones are likely to metastasize if left untreated.” In addition to serum PSA levels, criteria for determining tumor aggressiveness include tumor volume (the number of biopsies containing cancerous tissue) and the Gleason score (which predicts the aggressiveness of a tumor by looking at a sample of cancerous tissue under a microscope), with a Gleason score of 2-5 being low risk, 6-7 being intermediate risk and 8-10 being high risk. Etzioni said, “If a person has a low PSA level, a biopsy sample with a Gleason score of 6 or less, and very few biopsies containing cancerous tissue, then they are considered low risk.” Such men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer should more likely be given primary wait-list treatment (a form of watchful waiting) in lieu of previous treatment unless they are older or have a short life expectancy. If these patients go untreated, she says, “the chances of dying from this disease are small, about 3 percent.” Similarly, if these patients choose to be treated, the mortality rate is about 2 percent. “For most of those patients who are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer, as long as we have access to their original clinical data and tissue biopsy information, we can determine which ones need to be treated immediately and which ones would benefit more from delayed therapy.” Misconception #6 – Only one in fifty patients with prostate cancer diagnosed through PSA screening benefit from treatment. “This data from the preliminary publication of the ‘European Randomized Trial of Prostate Cancer Screening’ is clearly wrong,” Etzioni said, “and produces a very unfavorable harm-to-benefit ratio for PSA screening. It implies that if one person’s life is saved by PSA screening, 50 people are overdiagnosed and overtreated at the same time. ”Overdiagnosis” is a diagnosis of a disease that does not cause any adverse symptoms, much less death, during a person’s lifetime. “Overtreatment” is the treatment of a condition that is neither symptomatic nor life-threatening. The 50-to-1 ratio is based on short-term follow-up and a “gross underestimation” of patients who benefit from prolonged screening and an overestimation of the number of “overdiagnoses. The ratio of “overdiagnosed” and “overtreated” men diagnosed by PSA testing to men who benefit from long-term treatment should be correctly 10 to 1, she said.