Subject: Prostate cancer risk 'higher for black men'
Content: The Prostate Cancer Charity is funding research into the incidence of the disease among black men. More than 10,000 men die from prostate cancer in the UK each year and 20,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, with rates estimated to rise by almost 50% by 2021. Anecdotal evidence from consultants has long pointed to a disproportionally high number of men of African and African Caribbean descent suffering the disease but until now no formal research has been done. But studies in the USA, the Caribbean and Africa have consistently shown black men are at increased risk. In the US black men are advised to take a test for prostate cancer at the age of 40 rather than 50 which is recommended for other men. Less awareness The UK research is taking place at five centres around England where nurses will be employed to extract ethnic data from case notes. The researcher leading the project at the Royal Bristol Infirmary, Biral Patel, said awareness of the disease was lower among black men than among their white counterparts and that they often did not start treatment until later in their illness. Mr Patel added that an additional problem was that black men were often more reluctant than white men to acknowledge they had a problem. "Some people just don't return for further treatment after diagnosis. There is embarrassment connected with problems in the genital area, some try to suppress symptoms or ignore them, " he said. Warning signs include difficulty or pain when passing urine, the need to pass urine more often, broken sleep due to increased visits to pass urine, waiting for long periods before the urine flows and the feeling that the bladder has not emptied fully. Frequent urination was one of the problems which led to James Lewis visiting his doctor in 1995. He subsequently needed two operations to remove a cancerous prostate gland. Mr Lewis, who is 78, said that though he had experienced many of the tell-tale signs he had no idea they could be linked to cancer. "I was shocked and worried by the doctor's suggestion that I needed an operation but my wife and I agreed it was best to go through with it," he said. 'Catch 22' The chairman of Cancer Black Care, a support group for African and African Caribbean people with cancer, Frank Chinegwundoh, said for a long time it had been impossible to get funding for research into the incidence of prostate cancer among black men. "The first question would be 'well demonstrate to me that this is a problem' and if you can't demonstrate that it's a problem because there's no data then it's very difficult to get funding. It's a 'Catch 22' situation," he said. Mr Chinegwundoh, who is a consultant urologist at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, one of the hospitals taking part in the study, said he and other consultants had long noticed how over-represented black prostate cancer patients were compared to their numbers in the general population. "Of around 800 prostate cancer patients on the hospital's database about 10% are black, nearly 3 times their rate in the population," he said. He added that unofficial research he had done among patients in east London backed up this finding of over-representation. He added that he hoped the current research would only be the first step. "It will make a difference into going onto the next step which is why is the incidence higher in African Caribbean men, is it dietary, genetic or hormonal? "It will enable us to apply for funding to answer the next question which is why is there a difference," he said.
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