Enlarged Prostates May Actually Slow Cancer

Turns out that enlarged prostates, which can raise a PSA count and attract the attention of (1.) oncologists and (2.) surgeons, may actually offer some protection against aggressive prostate cancer.  That theory comes from researchers at Purdue University, whose computer simulations suggest that enlarged prostates put increased pressure on tumors, and inhibit their growth.  The findings, reported in a Purdue news release, suggest that it might be a bad idea to downsize an enlarged prostate through surgery or drugs, because doing so could lead to faster growth of prostate cancer. The researchers looked at data from patients in medical studies who had a history of both an enlarged prostate and prostate cancer. To perform computer simulations, they extracted a three-dimensional anatomy of the prostate and locations of the tumors from MRI images. At the end of a one-year period, the simulations showed that the tumor of a patient with history of an enlarged prostate barely grew at all. When the researchers removed history of an enlarged prostate in the computer program, the tumor had grown to be over six times larger at the end of the same time period. The researchers emphasize that their findings must now be clinically validated in humans through a long-term observational study.