Recently, researchers have found that a common bowel disease – inflammatory bowel disease – is linked to prostate cancer.
They found that people with inflammatory bowel disease have four to five times higher risk of prostate cancer.
The research was conducted by a team from Northwestern Medicine.
About 1 million American men have inflammatory bowel disease. It is a common chronic condition that includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Previous research has shown that men with inflammatory bowel disease also have elevated PSA (prostate-specific antigen) tests.
An elevated PSA can be an indicator of prostate cancer.
In the study, the team examined 1,033 men with inflammatory bowel disease and a control group of 9,306 men without the disease.
They followed the two groups of men for 18 years and found that those with inflammatory bowel disease were much more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and have higher PSA levels.
This is the first study showing that men with inflammatory bowel disease have higher PSA values and that these men also have a much higher risk of prostate cancer.
The team suggests that men with inflammatory bowel disease need to be screened more carefully for prostate cancer than a man without inflammatory bowel disease.
Many doctors think in these patients, the PSA is elevated just because they have an inflammatory condition. But it is possible that these men have a higher risk of prostate cancer.
Future work needs to examine the mechanism of how gut inflammation contributes to prostate cancer.
The lead author of the study is Dr. Shilajit Kundu, associate professor of urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The study is published in European Urology.
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