Racial Differences in Prostate Cancer Risk Remain Among US Servicemen With Equal Access to Care

摘要

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among US men, yet the etiology of this disease remains unclear. This study used military health care and demographic data to describe the incidence of prostate cancer in the US military from September 1993 to September 2003, and to identify demographic and occupational risk factors for prostate cancer hospitalization. Annual rates of first-encounter prostate cancer were adjusted for age and race. Cox's proportional hazards regression was employed to model the time to prostate cancer diagnosis. This study supports previous observations of an increased prostate cancer risk among black non-Hispanic men. Further, this study illustrated that this association exists regardless of access to care or socioeconomic status, which has not previously been reported in the literature. This finding suggests that black, non-Hispanic men may share yet-to-be-explored differences that may be important in prostate cancer etiology.