Recently released and unexpected findings have been announced, contrary to previous understandings, black men who received primary radiation therapy to treat their prostate cancer had lower rates of biochemical cancer recurrence than white men. They also had a lower rate of developing distant metastasis. These findings are from data coming from the randomized RTOG trials and were reported at the American Society of Radiation Oncology by Daniel Spratt, MD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Making this finding even more interesting is the finding that Black men do better when they receive Provenge than white men
Both of these findings point out that there are likely differences in the underlying prostate cancer disease between Black and White men. However, this conclusion does not negate the fact that Black men have less access to treatment than White men, a fact that needs to be corrected, especially given the circumstances indicated in these two conclusions that Black men do well when given treatment.
By Joel T. Nowak
