EARLY HAIR LOSS INCREASE PROSTATE CANCER RISK

Men in their 60s with prostate cancer are twice as likely as their cancer-free peers to have had androgenic alopecia (or male pattern baldness) begin in their 20s, French investigators report in the Annals of Oncology.
In a retrospective case–control study, men in their late 60s with prostate cancer had an odds ratio of 2.01 for androgenic alopecia at age 20 (95% confidence interval, 1.07 to 3.70; P = .0285), compared with age-matched controls.
However, although early hair loss might be a risk marker for prostate cancer later in life, there was no association between premature balding and advanced tumor stage, high Gleason score (7 or greater), or high prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level (>20 ng/mL), the researchers report.
Receding hairlines did not correlate with an early prostate cancer diagnosis, and the pattern of hair loss was not predictive of tumor aggressiveness, the authors found.
Nonetheless, alopecia's early assault on male vanity could help identify young men at risk for prostate cancer, the authors contend.
"An improved knowledge of risk factors, especially those that are easily identifiable in the patient, may allow us to target a population at high risk of developing prostate cancer and that may benefit from screening or chemoprevention," they write.
Lead researcher Michael Yassa, MD, currently assistant professor of medicine at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, told Medscape Medical News that the findings suggest an avenue of investigation into the origins of prostate cancer.
"I think that further research should [focus] on finding the exact link between hair loss, androgens, and prostate cancer — what exactly links those 3 together. Maybe that will give us more information about what to do with these people," he said.
A better understanding of that interplay could answer questions about whether men with a history of early balding could benefit from earlier screening or chemoprophylaxis with a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor (finasteride, dutasteride) or other agents, he and his coauthors suggest.
But a prostate cancer expert who was not involved in the study told Medscape Medical News that an early risk marker, even if it is validated in further studies, might do more harm than good.
"Most of the diagnoses that are made in younger people are not important to make; they alter a person's life and I really don't want people thinking about the specter of prostate cancer when they're very young," said Donald S. Kaufman, MD, director of the Claire and John Bertucci Center for Genitourinary Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
In addition, the authors' assertion that prostate cancer could be prevented with finasteride or dutasteride is controversial, Dr. Kaufman said.
"I don't think that's something we all would agree with," he said.
Pattern Recall
The investigators recruited 388 prostate cancer patients from databases from radiation oncology follow-up clinics in Paris and Toulouse, France, and 281 age-matched controls with no history of prostate cancer or hormonal disorders from the same hospital databases.
The participants (mean age, 67.2 years for cases; 66.4 years for controls) were mailed a questionnaire asking about their prostate cancer history, paternal prostate cancer, and balding history. They were also asked to recall and score their balding patterns at ages 20, 30, and 40, using a modified Hamilton-Norwood scale.
In addition, physicians of the respondents were sent a questionnaire confirming or ruling out prostate cancer history. Physicians of cases were asked the patient's age at diagnosis, disease stage at presentation (including TNM stage, Gleason score, and initial PSA level), primary therapy, treatment failures, time between treatment and failure, and their most recent medical impression of the disease (remission, failure, or metastasis).
The authors found that any balding at 20 years, but not at 30 or 40 years, was associated with an increased prostate cancer incidence later. There were no significant associations between the pattern of hair loss (frontal, vertex, or both) and the later development of prostate cancer, and early-onset alopecia was not associated with early-onset prostate cancer. There was also no association between early-onset disease and more aggressive tumors, defined as stage T3–T4, a Gleason score of 7 or higher, or a PSA greater than 20 ng/mL.
The study's funding source was not disclosed. Dr. Yassa, his coauthors, and Dr. Kaufman have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.