A new study under way at UC Davis Cancer Center may help doctors see beyond skin color when it comes to decisions about prostate-cancer screening and treatment for African-American men.

The “Diet and Ancestry Study of Prostate Cancer Among African-Americans” will analyze blood samples from 100 African-American volunteers living in the Sacramento area for genetic markers of European and African ancestry.

As a group, African-American men are twice as likely as white men to develop prostate cancer, and twice as likely to die of the disease. However, UC Davis Cancer Center researchers expect to find that not all black men have the same prostate cancer risk. The researchers hypothesize that African-Americans of predominantly European ancestry will have a lower prostate-cancer risk than those of predominantly African ancestry.

Several other diseases, including type 2 diabetes and systemic lupus erythematosus, are also linked with African ancestry.

“It’s been assumed that all men who self-identify as African-American are at equal risk of developing prostate cancer. Now we can look at this in more detail,” said Ralph deVere White, director of UC Davis Cancer Center and urological investigator for the study.

Posted on January 31, 2007 07:15 AM