Study links being overweight to prostate cancer survival rate

The New York Times (11/13, Bakalar) reports on a new study which suggests that “overweight men with advanced prostate cancer” do not live as long as patients with normal body mass. For the study, which was published online Monday, and is “scheduled to appear in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Cancer, lead author Matthew R. Smith, M.D., an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues, looked at 788 men” receiving “different types of therapies for prostate cancer. More than 50 percent of them were either overweight or obese.”

Extra fat raised the risk of dying from the disease by 52 percent, and obesity increased it to 64 percent, after researchers adjusted for other medical reasons. According to Dr. Smith, the reasons for this are not fully understood. However, he speculated, “It may be that prostate cancer treatments are less effective in men who have higher weights, or that other illnesses these men may have — such as diabetes — play a role in the increased risk of prostate cancer death.”