Do Patients with Familial Prostate Cancer Have Worse Outcomes?

Risk for prostate cancer is greater in men who have one or more first-degree relatives with the disease than in those who don’t. However, the literature is unclear about whether patients with familial prostate cancer have shorter disease-specific survival rates than do men with the sporadic form of the disease.

To investigate the potential association between familial prostate cancer and prognosis, Swedish researchers drew from a unique databank — the Swedish Family-Cancer Database — that links information from the Swedish Cancer Registry, the multigenerational registry, the national census, and death certificates. The investigators identified 4663 men who were diagnosed with primary prostate cancer from 1990 through 1999 and assessed 610 of…