Prostate Cancer: Good News for Bald People
Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.
More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.MunichHair loss causes problems for many men, even in their younger years. It was rumored for a long time that this could also be associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer. Scientists are now giving the all-clear.
That hair loss and prostate cancer could be connected does not seem absurd at first sight. Because the mechanism of development is mainly based on the same factors: heredity, age and testosterone & Co. Thus, male sex hormones cause hair loss in genetically predisposed men. This hereditary hormonal hair loss is the reason for most baldness. Testosterone also promotes the growth of existing prostate ulcers. Previous study results on this connection were inconsistent and often not reliable.
Cancer risk in focus
Cindy Ke Zhou and her team from the national Cancer Institute in Maryland wanted to clarify. In a large study, they examined the relationship between baldness at the age of 30, 45 or the current age of the participants and the risk of prostate cancer.
The scientists found that men with a bald head were no more likely to develop prostate cancer than their cohorts with lush hair. They were also no more susceptible to particularly aggressive tumors.
For the study, the team analyzed the data from the “Vitamins And Lifestyle” cohort study. The statements of over 32,500 men were included in the following investigations. At the start of the study, they were between 50 and 76 years old and had not yet been diagnosed with cancer - with the exception of skin cancer, which some participants had suffered from.
All clear for bald people
The researchers asked the men about their hair situation at the ages of 30, 45 and the current age.In the following nine years, almost 2,300 test subjects developed prostate cancer - that's around seven percent. At the time of cancer diagnosis, the men were on average 69 years old. The evaluation of the data is comforting for all bald heads: whether bald or full of hair - the prostate cancer risk was the same for all participants.
Losing up to 100 hairs a day is normal. If there are more, pathological hair loss can be the cause. Over two million people are affected in Germany. The causes are varied: In addition to hormonally hereditary hair loss, there can also be disorders of the immune system, skin diseases or damaged hair roots, for example as a result of malnutrition.
Source:
Ke Zhou Cindy et al .: Male pattern baldness in relation to prostate cancer risks: An analysis in the Vitamins and Lifestyle (VITAL) cohort study. The prostate. Doi: 10.1002 / pros.22927
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