Shorter survival time seen in young prostate cancer patients

Young men with advanced forms of prostate cancer do not live as long as older men with similar forms of the disease, according to research conducted at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Daniel Lin, MD, and colleagues, mined the SEER database to identify 318,774 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1988 and 2003. Among men with advanced prostate cancers, the youngest men (ages 35 to 44) had a particularly poor prognosis, compared with older men. The younger men were more likely to die from cancer, or another cause, sooner than older men with similar forms of cancer (Cancer online, May 22, 2009).

The researchers suspect young men with advanced prostate cancer may have biologically more aggressive forms of the disease.