Conventional prognostic factors fail to explain better prostate cancer survival in most...( Prognostic factors commonly used by ...),Health

Prognostic factors commonly used by clinicians to assess men with prostate cancer do not adequately predict survival outcomes in Asian men living in America, according to the first comprehensive ethnic analysis of Asian-American men with prostate cancer. Published in the September 15, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study showed that compared to white men, most Asian ethnic groups except South Asians paradoxically have better outcomes despite having worse prognostic profiles at the time of diagnosis. The study is the first to report prostate cancer survival data for Korean, South Asian and Vietnamese men living in the U.S.

In the U.S. in 2007, over 218,000 men are expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and over 27,000 will die. Established prognostic factors include age, summary stage, primary treatment, histologic grade, socioeconomic status, and year of diagnosis. Epidemiologic studies have identified racial differences in incidence and mortality, with African-American men being at greater risk than other races. Asian-American men as a single, ethnic group have the lowest incidence of disease and the lowest mortality rate. The reasons for these racial differences remain poorly studied.

In particular, the risk among different Asian ethnicities is poorly understood, in part, because most studies have aggregated all Asians into a single racial category, ignoring the diverse ethnicities that make up Asia. The few that have tried to analyze by Asian ethnicity have typically analyzed only a few ethnicities, missing significant Asian-American ethnic populations in the process. Interestingly, the data to date show that compared to non-Hispanic white Americans, some Asian ethnicities, such as Japanese-Americans, have higher survival rates, despite worse clinical disease, whereas others, such as Filipino-Americans, have worse survival rates. However, South Asians e.g., Indians, Pakista
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