MONDAY, July 10, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Indigenous men are less likely to receive prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing and are more likely to be diagnosed with higher-risk prostate cancer, according to a study published online July 10 in Cancer.

Alex Kiciak, M.D., from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and colleagues conducted an observational cohort study of men diagnosed with prostate cancer between June 2014 and October 2022 to examine disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous men. Data were examined for 1,444,947 men.

The researchers found that men in Indigenous communities were less likely than those outside of Indigenous communities to have PSA testing performed (32 versus 46 PSA tests per 100 men aged 50 to 70 within one year). Of the 6,049 men diagnosed with prostate cancer, Indigenous men had higher-risk disease characteristics than non-Indigenous men, including a higher proportion with PSA ≥10 ng/ml (48 versus 30 percent), TNM stage ≥T2 (65 versus 47 percent), and Gleason grade group ≥2 (79 versus 64 percent). Indigenous men had a higher risk of developing prostate cancer metastases than non-Indigenous men over a median follow-up of 40 months (hazard ratio, 2.3).

“The findings are significant because they identify Indigenous men as a population at risk for more aggressive prostate cancer and potentially worse survival,” a coauthor said in a statement. “Key infrastructure changes, including better access to primary care physicians, may help improve prostate cancer screening and identify men at earlier, and curable, stages of the disease.”

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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