One in five Hispanic men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer

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Prostate cancer has the lousy reputation it deserves. Second only to skin cancer on the Most Common Cancer hit parade, prostate cancer affects one in eight of all American males. Already this year, an estimated 248,530 men have been newly diagnosed with prostate cancer, a nearly 30% increase over last year. It’s estimated that more than 34,000 of those diagnosed in 2021 will die from the disease.
New studies conducted earlier this year by the American Urological Association (AUA) have found these mortality rates are higher among men of color. One in six Black men and one in five Hispanic men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer among all cancer diagnoses next year, according to this new data.
But what’s really alarming, according to the study, is that these higher mortality rates may have less to do with race-specific genetics than with infrequent use of important follow-up testing by men of color. What’s more, there’s speculation that this revelation may be linked to physicians favoring white patients over Black, brown and Asian men.

More Questions Than Answers
It’s too soon to say why there’s a higher prostate cancer mortality rate in ethnic communities, according to Dr. Brian McNeil, associate dean for clinical affairs in the College of Medicine at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Genetics do play a role here,” says McNeil, an AUA spokesperson who presented the new data at that group’s recent annual meeting. “Men with a family history of prostate cancer have a higher risk of developing it and certain ethnic groups do seem to have a higher incidence of prostate cancer in a more aggressive form, which points to nature playing a role. And we haven’t definitely answered questions about environment and diet yet, either.”
Lately, experts are considering whether this higher mortality rate is linked to post-diagnosis choices made by men of color.
The new study concluded that these men are less likely than their white counterparts to follow a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test — a common initial screening for men between the ages of 55 and 69 — with a magnetic resonance image (MRI). This increasingly used follow-up can eliminate the need for an invasive biopsy and catch prostate cancer early for more successful treatment.