One of the leading cancers to affect the male population today is prostate cancer. It is the most common cause of death in men over the age of 75 years diagnosed with cancer. This form of cancer rarely occurs in men below the age of 40 years.
The prostate is a walnut-like organ that wraps around the urethra and transports urine out of the body. Typically, prostate cancer progresses slowly, which is not to say that aggressive forms of prostate cancer do not exist. Prostate cancer has a tendency to metastasize (spread) to other parts of the body like the bone and the lymph nodes, making it important that patients undergo therapy as early as possible. Symptoms of prostate cancer could include difficulty in urinating, sexual dysfunction and pain. Unfortunately, a huge majority of men experiences no symptoms at all, which means they do not undergo therapy and therefore die from the disease.
Although the exact cause of prostate cancer is not known, it is believed that several factors trigger the disease. Foremost among these causes is smoking. It is believed that smoking could be one of the risk factors that trigger the cancer, and that smoking aggravates the disease in men who have been detected with prostate cancer.
As recently as June, 2011, a new Health Professionals Follow-up Study examined 5,366 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1986 and 2006. Throughout this time, 1,630 people died due to prostate cancer. 878 cases were diagnosed with prostate cancer “biochemical recurrence.” The crude rate for cancer specific death smokers versus those who have never smoked was 9.6 versus 15.3 per 1,000 people a year.
Research shows that when compared to non-smokers, smokers were under increased risk of cancer mortality, although there was no increase in risk of biochemical recurrence in smokers. Smokers diagnosed with cancer were also more at risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases.
Various other studies have also shown that men below the age of 65 years who smoked one pack of cigarettes a day for a long period (like 40 years or more) have high chances of suffering from the aggressive forms of prostate cancer.
The exact impact of smoking on the body of patients detected with prostate cancer is not known. However, it is believed that smoking alters the hormonal balance within the body and impacts the functioning of certain genes. This could lead to elevated production of androgens, steroid hormones that are responsible for the malignant multiplication of prostate cells in the body. In addition to this, tobacco is also a source of heavy metals like cadmium, which could react with zinc that is found in the prostate. Tobacco contains several carcinogenic materials which arrest DNA repair inside the body and allow cancer cells to mutate.
Additionally, research suggests that smoking exacerbates side effects that arise from therapy of prostate cancer. This is true in the case of people suffering from other kinds of cancer like neck cancer, lung cancer and so on. Patients who take in tobacco smoke at the time of therapy could experience acute gastrointestinal side effects like diarrhea. That is why it is vital that patients quit smoking before they start therapy.
Interestingly, the risk of death in case of men who had quit smoking for more than 10 years was akin to the risk of men who had never smoked.
Thus, it is quite obvious that there is a clear link between smoking and mortality in patients suffering from cancers like prostate cancer and that the risk goes down significantly when people quit smoking.
