Heart disease, prostate cancer may share risk factors

Dr. Stephen Freedland, a urologist at Duke, has long promoted healthy lifestyle changes for preventing prostate cancer. Now research backs him up.

Freedland and other Duke researchers looked at the results of a large clinical trial testing the prostate drug dutastride. The FDA decided the drug's risks outweighed its benefits for preventing cancer, but the data revealed a surprise.

"What we found was that men who told us at baseline that they had heart disease, were 35 percent more likely to have cancer during the study," he said. The risk got greater over time.

The results suggest that heart disease and prostate cancer share similar causes, but specifically which ones is unknown. For now, a healthy lifestyle is a safe prescription.

"If we eat right and exercise, we can reduce the risk of some of these diseases," Freedland said.

Norman Pope, a 13-year survivor of prostate cancer, thinks his active lifestyle may contribute to his on-going good health.

Since his diagnosis, Pope stays physically active and he adopted a healthier diet which helped him lose more than 10 pounds.

"Heart healthy is prostate healthy," Freedland said.

The Duke study is published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.