Health, Prostate Cancer | featured news

Nobody loves a party pooper. And it seems nobody these days loves the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Few Americans had even heard of it until three years ago, when the advisory board with the 10-syllable name challenged convention by saying women under 50 might not benefit from mammograms, just as the debate over health care was coming to a boil.

Johnson & Johnson's drug Zytiga slowed the growth of prostate cancer in a clinical trial of men who hadn't undergone chemotherapy.

Giving healthy men P.S.A. blood tests for prostate cancer does not save lives and often leads to treatment that can cause needless pain and side effects, the government panel said.

The drugs, mainly for men with late-stage prostate cancer, can extend lives for additional months, but some cost more than $90,000 for a course of treatment.

Given the bind that many prominent American men have thrust themselves into — think Tiger Woods, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, et al. — it seems it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. And your prostate gland appears to agree.

Men who have a certain genetic variations that put them at higher risk of prostate cancer may benefit from regular screening for the disease, a study by British scientists found Friday.

For researchers, a key to studying any cancer is finding its "cell of origin." Now scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles say they've found just that -- a specific type of cell that gives rise to prostate cancer.

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may protect men against prostate cancer and other urological complaints, as well as reducing the risk of heart attacks, US researchers said on Sunday.

A decade-long study following more than 75,000 men found that prostate cancer screenings led to more diagnoses but did not reduce the number of deaths from the illness.