For all the men out there and all the women who love them, losing weight just may reduce their risk of aggressive prostate cancer, according to a new study.

The American Cancer Society and Duke University researchers discovered that men who lost at least 11 pounds reduced their risk by 42 percent of the kind of prostate cancer likely to spread much quicker than other forms.

In fact, men who suffer from obesity are 54 percent more likely to get aggressive cancer, according to studies.

Although most men who get prostate cancer survive the disease, the treatments, such as surgery and radiation, can cause side effects like impotence and incontinence, so the new finding suggests that losing weight - or never gaining it in the first place  -  may be one way to reduce the toll the condition takes.

"Weight is one of the most common cancer risk factors that people have the ability to control," said Dr. Carmen Rodriguez, the lead researcher with the American Cancer Society. "Our study adds to increasing evidence of the importance of maintaining a healthy weight throughout adult life.

"Although our study suggests that weight loss may lower the risk of aggressive prostate cancer, given the difficulty of losing weight, emphasis should be put on the importance of avoiding weight gain to reduce the risk of prostate cancer."

Killer disease 

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men, except for skin cancers. In 2006, about 235,000 cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed, with 27,000 deaths, which makes the condition the second leading cause of cancer death in men, next to lung cancer.

But if caught early while the cancer is confined to the gland, the condition is  highly curable, with cure rates ranging from 90 percent to 95 percent.

Several studies have found that heavier men are more likely to wind up with more advanced or aggressive prostate cancer and more likely to have a recurrence of the disease after treatment than are men of normal weight.  The new research is the first one focusing on the role of weight loss.

The Society and Duke Prostate Center researchers looked at the heights and weights of nearly 70,000 men in 1982 and 1992, and every three years until 2003. Between 1992 and 2003, 5,200 developed prostate cancer, and the heaviest men suffered a higher risk of their cancer being aggressive.

They also had a higher risk of developing fatal prostate cancer.

Possible explanations

But men who lost at least 11 pounds between 1982 and 1992 had a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, especially high-grade cancer, compared to men whose weight stayed within five pounds of what it was in 1982, according to the results.

Rodriguez attributed the findings to the possibility that obese men don't get screened for prostate cancer as often as thinner men and that obesity often masks the cancer until it is more advanced.

In addition, overweight men tend to have larger prostates, which makes finding cancer during biopsies more difficult, she said.

Howard Parnes, a prostate-cancer expert with the National Cancer Institute, said men who suffer from obesity may have lower levels of testosterone, the male hormone, and more estrogen, the female hormone. Abdominal fat also affects their levels of insulin, a hormone that helps regulate the amount of sugar in the blood.

All of those factors may combine to increase overweight men's chances of aggressive prostate cancer, Parnes said.

For more information

•  Obesity May Make Diagnosing Prostate Cancer Harder

•  What is Prostate Cancer?

•  Symptoms of Prostate Cancer

•  U.S. National Library of Medicine

•  National Cancer Institute

The writer, Steve Smith, health editor at Nubella News, is a prostate cancer survivor. This article includes information from USA Today.

Did you know?

About one in six men will get prostate cancer during his lifetime, making it the second most common form of cancer in men, behind skin cancers.

Source: American Cancer Society
Reference: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention

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