Prostate Health Archive

With their ability to smell tiny amounts of chemicals, trained dogs can easily find explosives or illegal drugs hidden in a suitcase. But mounting evidence points to another helpful job for man’s best friend: finding prostate cancer before it causes any symptoms.

Men who experience a spike in PSA but who have no symptoms after surgery or radiation therapy for prostate cancer can wait for up to two years before starting hormone therapy, according to a new study.

Some men have a slightly shorter penis after undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous prostate gland. A new study shows that taking an erectile dysfunction drug like Viagra or Cialis after surgery can prevent that from happening.

Thanks in part to advertising, many men with prostate cancer believe that they’ll get better results with robot-assisted prostate surgery than with more traditional open surgery. The latest study doesn’t bear that out.

Taking supplements of selenium or vitamin E, once thought to prevent prostate cancer, seems to do just the opposite. A new report shows that men who take vitamin E or selenium are at higher risk for developing prostate cancer. Bottom line: men shouldn’t take selenium or vitamin E as a way to prevent prostate cancer, or anything else for that matter.

Mass marketing of testosterone therapy may have men eager to try this seemingly simple fix. But the latest science should have them scratching their heads and putting away the credit card—at least for now. A new study published in the online journal PLOS One shows an increase in the risk of having a heart attack in the months after starting testosterone therapy. The potential for danger was highest in older men. A report in the November 6, 2013, issue of JAMA showed that men who used testosterone therapy didn’t fare as well after artery-opening angioplasty as men who didn’t take testosterone. Neither was the type of study that can prove cause and effect. They can only show associations, or links. That means there’s no smoking gun here that testosterone therapy is harmful. But the studies do suggest caution. Given the uncertainly over the benefits and risks of testosterone therapy, what’s a man to do? Take a cautious approach, advises the Harvard Men’s Health Watch.

Prostatitis (infection or inflammation of the prostate gland) flies under the radar even though it affects up to one in six men at some point in their lifetimes. It triggers more than two million visits to doctors and untold agony each year.

Radical prostatectomy changes the experience of orgasm. But it doesn’t need to be any less pleasurable or satisfying, says Dr. Ravi Kacker, a urologist and fellow in male sexual medicine at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

New research has has identified an enzyme that may be the escape hatch that advanced prostate cancer uses to evade hormone therapy. If the findings hold up, the enzyme might be a prime target for a drug that would treat castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Metformin—the drug that millions of people with diabetes take to control their blood sugar—may be on the brink of a second career. Evidence from a variety of studies suggests that metformin may delay or slow the progression of prostate cancer. Metformin does not, however, appear to prevent the development of prostate cancer in the first place.