Bald men at higher risk of prostate cancer?
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Men with androgenic alopecia or commonly known as male pattern baldness are more likely than those without the condition to develop prostate cancer, a new study in the Feb 15, 2011 of Annals of Oncology found.
The study led by Michael Yassa and colleagues from European Georges Pompidou Hospital found men with prostate cancer were twice as likely to have androgenic alopecia at age 20.
For the study, Yassa et al. asked 669 subjects, 388 with male pattern baldness and 281 without to score their balding pattern at ages 20, 30 and 40. And then they analysed the association between the scores and the risk of prostate cancer.
The researchers also found the pattern of hair loss was not predictive of the development of prostate cancer and there was no correlation between early-onset androgenic alopecia and earlier diagnosis or severity of the malignancy.
Yassa et al. concluded that early-onset androgenic alopecia is associated with the development of prostate cancer, but it remains unknown whether routine prostate cancer screening and 5-alpha reductatase inhibitors, which are used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia and androgenic alopecia because they possess an antiandrogenic effect, may benefit the men with male pattern baldness.
Studies on the association between male baldness and prostate cancer risk are inconsistent.
Another study led by Cremers R.G. and colleagues of Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in The Netherlands found early baldness was inversely correlated with prostate cancer.
The authors, who published their findings in the December 2010 issue of European Journal of Cancer, found men with baldness at age 20 and 40 were actually 14 and 19 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer, respectively.
J.L. Wright and colleagues of University of Washington School Medicine in Seattle conducted a study of 999 cases of prostate cancer and 942 controls and found similar evidence earlier, suggesting that hair loss at age 30 was linked to a 29 percent reduction in risk of prostate cancer. But no risk reduction was seen among those who started losing hair at age 60 and older.
The protective effect from the androgenic alopecia was apparently more significant in men who lost hair from both the top of head and forehead and their risk for prostate cancer were reduced by 45 percent.
Wright et al. published their findings in the April 2010 issue of Cancer Epidemiology.
Studies have determined that pattern hair loss has something to do with hormones called androgens, which are important for normal male sexual development and regulate hair growth and sex drive.
Men with male pattern baldness have lower levels of total testosterone, higher levels of free testosterone and total free androgens. Higher prostate cancer risk is linked with higher levels of testosterone.
Prostate cancer is expected to be diagnosed in about 200,000 men each year in the United States and the disease leads to deaths of about 40,000 men annually in the country.
By David Liu
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