Early treatment helps slash prostate cancer death rate

Early diagnosis and hormone treatment are reducing the prostate cancer death rate in the United States and Europe.

Professor Richard Peto, of Oxford University, said deaths from the disease fell by a third between 1990 and 2000 in American men aged 50 to 74, and by a quarter in males a decade older.

"In the EU it is down by at least 20 per cent and still falling," he told a cancer conference in Copenhagen.

"The big changes are emphasis on early detection and on local control and widespread use of hormone treatments."

Prostate is one of the most common cancers in men.

Each year 543,000 new cases are reported worldwide and the disease kills 200,000 - mostly older men in developed countries.

But Professor Peto told the Ecco 12 European Cancer Conference that just as the drug tamoxifen had helped reduce female deaths from breast cancer, treatments targeting male hormones were having a similar impact on prostate cancer.

"Hormone treatment as a whole works much better than previously thought," he said.

The disease is usually treated with surgery or radiation treatment.

Hormone therapy deals with cancerous cells that have not been removed by surgery or destroyed with radiation.

Hormone therapy became popular about 10 years ago and improvements in the treatment mean patients suffer fewer unpleasant side-effects.

Most men diagnosed with prostate cancer are 65 or older.

The incidence of the disease is rising in many countries but experts believe it is due largely to improved screening.

A family history of the disease raises the risk of developing it, and a diet high in animal fat may also play a role.

- REUTERS