Prostate Cancer

A new type of PSA blood test could spare up to 200,000 men a year the need for painful biopsies to determine if they have prostate cancer, doctors in a large national trial said yesterday.The test, which received government approval in February, helps to distinguish between early-stage prostate cancers and benign conditions that should merely be watched."Medical science has come up with a more rational approach to screening for prostate cancer," said Dr. Alan Partin, a urologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, one of seven medical centers involved in the study.

Frank Robinson got the news on May 3. Cancer. Prostate cancer. The same cancer that recently afflicted three of his baseball brethren -- Bob Watson, Joe Torre and Tom McCraw. "Nothing I can do about it," Robinson thought. "I can't say, `Poof, get out of there.' " But in a sense, the baseball Hall of Famer already had done something about it. By taking a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, Robinson enabled doctors to detect his cancer early. "They said it was the lowest grade of cancer there is -- non-aggressive, all within the prostate," said Robinson, the former Orioles player, manager and executive.

Dr. Frank Aram Oski, the noted former head of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who campaigned for breast milk rather than cow's milk for infants, died of prostate cancer Saturday at his home in Baltimore. He was 64.Dr. Oski became director of Hopkins' department of pediatrics and pediatrician in chief at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in 1985 after building an international reputation as an expert on children's blood disorders and nutritional deficiencies.In October, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In a season of ritual overeating, Johns Hopkins researchers have come up with another reason for men to watch their diets: Low cholesterol might protect them from the most aggressive form of prostate cancer. This isn't the first time medical researchers have linked fats to cancer and its consequences. Recent studies have linked obesity to higher death rates from several types of cancer, and a previous Hopkins study found that men on cholesterol-lowering drugs were less likely to develop fast-growing prostate tumors.

Fifty-five years ago, a Chicago surgeon named Dr. Charles Huggins discovered that prostate cancer cells needed testosterone to grow. He showed that removing or blocking the action of this male sex hormone could cause prostate cancers to shrink and suppress their ability to spread. The finding brought him the Nobel Prize and made anti-testosterone therapy the standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer.Now, Dr. Shutsung Liao, a biochemist who has been a longtime colleague of Huggins at the University of Chicago, has discovered that the relationship between prostate cancer and testosterone is not quite so simple.

Tested last year for prostate cancer, John Lenahan was found to have high levels of a potential telltale substance called prostate specific antigen, or PSA. Although a subsequent biopsy didn't show any evidence of cancer, Lenahan, 64, was left wondering. "I worry," said the semiretired lawyer from Woodbridge, Va. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't." Every year, almost 2 million American men have prostate cancer biopsies, almost all because of a high PSA reading. But about 75 percent of these men don't have cancer.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Men who eat the equivalent of three cheeseburgers, fries and milkshakes each day triple their risk of prostate cancer, Stanford University researchers reported today.Asian men may increase their risk even more -- by four to eight times -- if they eat lots of food high in saturated fat, such as red meat, butter and cheese.But researchers also gave men some good news: Their study found vasectomy does not increase the risk of prostate cancer, as some previous research had found.

In men who have prostate cancer, obesity is linked to an increased risk that the cancer will be aggressive and likely to recur after surgery, two studies show. A connection to obesity might help to explain a racial difference in prostate cancer that has long puzzled researchers: The disease tends to occur at a younger age in black men in the United States than in whites, and it is more aggressive and twice as likely to be fatal. In the two studies, blacks had higher rates of obesity than whites, a finding that the researchers said might account for much of the racial disparity in the severity of the disease.

Urging men to overcome the fears that keep many from the doctor's office, Gov. William Donald Schaefer announced yesterday a statewide campaign of free screenings and lectures intended to reduce Maryland's high death rate from prostate cancer.The assault on prostate cancer is the latest salvo in the administration's effort to end Maryland's dubious distinction as the state with the nation's highest death rate from cancers overall. In prostate cancer deaths, Maryland ranks sixth.Mr. Schaefer also signed an executive order banning smoking in all state agencies, a measure aimed at curbing the leading cause of lung cancer.

Scientists have discovered a fused gene that might be responsible for a large percentage of prostate cancers, sparking hope for better diagnostic tests and, ultimately, targeted treatments for one of the most common forms of cancer in men. The researchers say a similar genetic process might govern the development of other so-called solid tumor cancers, the most prevalent type. Scientists in Baltimore are working to replicate the results, while the study's authors are trying to develop diagnostic tests based on the findings.