WebMD Medical News Louise Chang, MD May 16, 2011 -- Obesity and
prostate cancer may be a bad combination, new research suggests.
The risk of the cancer spreading is more likely in both obese
and overweight men, researchers found. "We found that overweight
men were three times more likely to have their cancer spread,"
says Christopher J. Keto, MD, a urological oncology postdoctoral
associate at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. "Obese
men were five times more likely than normal-weight men to have
their cancer spread," he tells WebMD. The study was presented at
the annual meeting of the American Urological Association in
Washington, D.C. The findings are consistent with previous
research that showed a link between obesity and poorer outcomes
in prostate cancer patients. About 217,730 new cases of prostate
cancer were diagnosed in 2010, according to the American Cancer
Society. About 32,000 men died of the disease last year. Keto
and colleagues focused on 287 men who had removal of their
prostate glan