How Neighborhoods Factor Into Prostate Cancer Rates

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

A new study shows Black men, who live in high stress, redlined and disadvantaged neighborhoods, are more likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer.

Health outcomes, including cancer, are influenced by the expression of stress-related genes, which in turn would contribute to an increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer, according to researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Virginia Commonwealth University, which conducted the study that was published in JAMA, July 12, 2024.

Researchers analyzed 218 men with prostate cancer (168 [77 percent] African-American men and 50 [23 percent] White men) who received radical prostatectomy surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center from August 1992 to January 2021. Study participants had available RNA expression data from prostate tumor tissue, and had a valid residential, noninstitutional address at the time of diagnosis available for geocoding.

“To our knowledge, our study is one of the first to identify associations between neighborhood factors and RNA expression in prostate tumor tissue,” researchers noted in the study. “Similar to previous studies, we found that African-American men with prostate cancer were more likely than their White counterparts to reside in disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

In short, Black study participants tended to reside in areas with higher segregated housing patterns or a “concentration of disadvantage(s)” that triggered stress.

Researchers said more research is needed.

Although all men are at a risk for prostate cancer, Black men are at higher risk. They are about twice as likely to get and die from prostate cancer than white men. The reasons for this, however, are not definitively known.

Prostate cancer is the second most common form of cancer in American men, right behind skin cancer. About one in eight American men will develop prostate cancer at some point in their lives, and about 1 in 40 American men will die of prostate cancer.

Currently, Black men are disproportionately more likely to receive an advanced prostate cancer diagnosis, (sometimes due to reduced access to health care and screening), and more likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer, which is more likely to be fatal.

Black men have a 70 percent higher rate of developing high-risk prostate cancer, and they are also more than twice as likely to die of it.

Prostate cancer is one of the most treatable forms of the disease with the five-year survival rate for men diagnosed with it being greater than 99 percent if the cancer is detected during the early stage.

Most studies suggest Black men should consider prostate cancer screening at 45 years. Other studies suggest those with family history consider age 40.