The participating hospitals include Paoli Memorial Hospital, Pinnacle Health System in Harrisburg and Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill. The money will help further the mission of PRAP, which provides special screening, education and support for men at high risk of the disease. In general, sons and brothers of white men with prostate cancer and all African American men have a higher than normal risk of prostate cancer.
Hereditary susceptibility has important implications for men.
When prostate cancer runs in families, it tends to occur at progressively younger ages and is more aggressive than the slow-growing prostate cancers that typically affect elderly patients. Genetic factors clearly have a role in prostate cancer. Some of those causes may include factors like a person's diet, what industrial chemicals or pesticides he's exposed to at work, and if there are other cancer-causing agents he may be exposed to. Understanding what contributes to prostate-cancer risk is especially important to African Americans, who have the highest rates of prostate cancer in the world. Since this cancer is relatively rare among blacks in Africa and other countries, racial heredity does not account for black Americans' increased risk.