Conventional prognostic factors fail to explain better prostate cancer survival in most...(nis Bangladesh etc. who represent the t...),Health

Dr. Anthony Robbins of the California Cancer Registry in Sacramento, and co-investigators compared prognostic factors and survival rates of 116,916 men (108,076 whites and 8,840 Asians from the six largest represented Asian ethnicities - Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Vietnamese) diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Dr. Robbins and his coauthors found that for each Asian ethnic subgroup, prognostic risk profiles were worse compared to whites. For example, all Asian ethnicities were more likely to have more advanced disease and use non-curative therapies. However, for all Asian ethnicities except South Asians, survival rates were equal to or better than whites. Japanese-Americans, for example, had significantly lower hazard ratio compared to non-Hispanic white Americans (34% lower). In contrast, South Asian-Americans had significantly higher hazard ratio compared to non-Hispanic white Americans (40% higher).

The study should help physicians more accurately apply prognostic factors to their prostate cancer patients. The authors conclude, these results argue that traditional prognostic factors for survival from prostate cancer (stage, grade, treatment, age, year of diagnosis, and socioeconomic status), do not explain why most Asian men have better survival compared to whites, but they do explain the poorer survival of South Asian men compared to whites.

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