Largest-Ever Prostate Cancer Study Seeks to Explain Disproportionate Rate in Blacks

The largest-ever prostate cancer prevention study -- launched this summer by the National Cancer Institute -- seeks to recruit African-American men in order to study why "[t]he disease strikes and kills black men at a disproportionately high rate," the Detroit News reports. Each year, 200,000 American men are diagnosed with prostate cancer, and nearly 3,000 of them die. According to Issac Powell, a urologist at the Detroit-based Karmanos Cancer Institute, African-American men are at least 66% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and "two to three times" more likely to die from it. Powell added, "We don't really know why African-American men are disproportionately affected, but we're looking at several factors. There could be biological or genetic factors involved," Powell said. Despite NCI researchers' emphasis on recruiting African-American men, researchers say that so far, only 9% of the study's 32,400 participants are black, far less than study's goal of 20% (Lewis, Detroit News, 11/11).