Race May Influence Treatment Receipt in Prostate Cancer

TUESDAY, June 29, 2021 (HealthDay News) — For men with prostate cancer, race seems to influence receipt of definitive treatment, with the association varying in the context of the patient’s treatment benefit, according to a study published online June 29 in Cancer.

Temitope Rude, M.D., from New York University in New York City, and colleagues used the Veterans Health Association Corporate Data Warehouse to conduct a cohort study of 35,427 veterans diagnosed with low- and intermediate-risk prostate cancer between 2011 and 2017.

The researchers found that compared with non-Black men, Black men had 1.05 times the odds of receiving treatment when controlling for covariates, and men in the high treatment benefit group had 1.4 times the odds of receiving treatment compared with those in the low treatment benefit group. There was a significant interaction observed for race and treatment benefit, with the likelihood of receiving treatment reduced for Black men versus non-Black men in the high treatment benefit category (odds ratio, 0.89).

“Our study suggests, for reasons that remain unclear, that Black men who need treatment may be choosing against the most beneficial prostate cancer therapies (which are often more invasive), or that such ‘high-benefit’ treatments are not being offered to them as aggressively as they are to non-Black patients,” a coauthor said in a statement.

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