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For patients with prostate cancer, particularly those identified by screening, a major question is whether the cancer will cause morbidity or death. Researchers studied Veterans Affairs medical records and immunohistochemical tissue analyses for 1172 men with incident prostate cancer (89% localized). Half the men had prostate-specific antigen levels ≥10 µg/L. During a follow-up of 11 to 16 years, 842 deaths occurred; 22% of them were attributable to prostate cancer.
In analyses adjusted for age, comorbidity, tumor stage, Gleason score, and prostate-specific antigen level, two molecular markers of cell cycle regulation measured in prostate tumors were significantly associated with prostate cancer mortality: bcl-2, an apoptosis-related molecul…