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Compared with white men, African-American men may be at increased risk of their prostate cancer returning after they have undergone removal of the prostate gland, especially if they had a high-risk form of the disease.
In their study presented data on over 1,400 patients who underwent removal of their prostate.
Prostate cancer returned in about one in five of the patients, and researchers found that ethnicity made a difference in whether or not a patient's cancer returned. According to the researchers, African Americans were 50% more likely than the other study participants to get prostate cancer again.
Ethnicity was most important for high-risk patients. They defined high risk as those patients with very high (more than 20 ng/mL) prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels and aggressive tumors.
When the investigators looked at a group of 975 patients for whom they also had information about income and education, ethnicity was no longer a predictor of disease recurrence.
American Urological Association's Annual Meeting May 28, 2002
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