ANN ARBOR, Mich., Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Black men with prostate cancer are more likely to have a family history of prostate and breast cancer than whites, say Michigan researchers.
Researchers Jennifer Beebe-Dimmer and Kathleen Cooney at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor reviewed the records of the Flint Men's Health Study, a population-based study of African-American men ages 40 to 79 who live in Flint.
Since African-American men are 60 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than Caucasian men, the team focused on family history in order to identify people who needed more aggressive prostate-cancer screening.
The subjects were 121 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and 179 healthy controls who completed a survey on their family history of prostate and breast cancer.
The researchers found that men with prostate cancer were almost five times more likely to have a brother with prostate cancer and about four times more likely to have a sister with breast cancer than healthy men, and their sisters had a higher incidence of premenopausal breast cancer than the general population.
This was the first study to find a link between breast cancer and prostate cancer in African-Americans, the researchers said.
"Collecting a family history of prostate and breast cancer, especially among siblings, could be a key component of assessing prostate cancer risk among African-American men," Cooney said. She also thought the findings might help scientists identify new genes associated with both prostate and breast cancer in the future.
