Clinical features of familial or hereditary prostate cancer in korean men: a pilot study

There are few data regarding the epidemiology of hereditary or familial prostate cancer (PCa) in East Asians, especially in Korean men. Therefore, we evaluated the incidence of familial and hereditary PCa and the relation between socioeconomic status and the incidence of nonsporadic prostate cancer (NSPC).

We collected data from all patients who were treated for PCa at our center between November 2009 and January 2010. All patients were either newly diagnosed or had been diagnosed with PCa and seen as outpatients during the study period.

In a sample of 218 patients with PCa; 25 (11.5%) were NSPC patients, and 193 (88.6%) were sporadic PCa sporadic prostate cancer (SPC) patients. Overall, 11.5% of the patients had a positive family history. There was one hereditary PCa family (three patients, 1.4%) and 11 familial PCa families (22 patients, 10.1%). Patients were divided into three different age groups. Of these, 18 (9.3%) SPC patients and 6 (24%) NSPC patients were diagnosed with the disease at the age of 55 years or younger (p=0.02). Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels in the NSPC group were significantly higher than in the SPC group (7.2±3.2 versus 6.3±4.9 ng/ml, p=0.042). SPC patients had larger waist circumferences than did NSPC patients (p=0.041). There were no significant differences between the SPC and NSPC groups in terms of socioeconomic status, Gleason score, pathological stage, or pathologic Gleason grade.

East Asian NSPC patients are diagnosed at earlier ages than are SPC patients, even though the incidence of NSPC in the East Asian population is lower than in Western men.