A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that, among prostate cancer patients, current smokers have an increased risk of prostate cancer mortality compared with non-smokers. Led by Dr. Stacey Kenfield and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers also found that the number of pack-years smoked was directly associated with an increased risk of death from prostate cancer. In this prospective observational study, over 5,300 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1986 and 2006 were recruited as part of the Health Professionals Follow-Up study. The results also demonstrated that, for smokers who had quit for at least ten years, the risk of prostate cancer-specific mortality was similar to that of men who had never smoked.
This is not the first study to reach this conclusion, notes ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. But it s important to note that smoking itself does not increase the risk for prostate cancer. Rather, for those already diagnosed with the disease, smoking increases the risk of death. This can be paralleled to breast cancer, which is also not related to smoking yet breast cancer patients who smoke also have poorer outcomes.