Balding before 30 may cut prostate cancer risk

19th March 2010 - Here's potentially good news for balding men, especially young balding men who may be distressed by their lack of hair.

Hair loss before the age of 30 is associated with a lower risk of prostatecancer later in life, according to a new study that contradicts some earlier research.

''Men who have early-onset male pattern baldness, by the time they are 30, were found to have a 29% reduction in the risk of developing prostate cancer," says study co-author Dr Jonathan Wright, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle in the US. He’s also assistant professor of urology at the University of Washington, School of Medicine in Seattle. The study is published online in Cancer Epidemiology.

''The longer you have the baldness, the more the protection," he tells us.

The apparent protection was found, he says, for aggressive and less aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

Baldness and prostate cancer facts

Male pattern baldness is a common condition that affects between 25 and 30 per cent of men by the age of 30, rising to nearly 80 per cent at age 70.

Testosterone is converted to dihydrotestosterone or DHT, and baldness occurs when hair follicles become exposed to too much DHT.

NHS figures say around 35,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the UK each year. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, about 10,000 men in the UK die from prostate cancer every year.

The prostate gland surrounds the neck of a man's bladder and urine-carrying tube, or urethra.

Balding men and prostate cancer risk: Study details

Wright and his colleagues evaluated 999 US men, aged between 35 and 74, diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2002 and 2005. They compared them to 942 men without prostate cancer, age matched to the patients.

All of the men reported their hair pattern at the age of 30: little or no hair loss, loss at forehead only, loss at the top of head and forehead. The men diagnosed with prostate cancer also reported their hair loss pattern, if any, a year before their diagnosis. The men without a prostate cancer diagnosis reported their hair loss pattern a year before a reference date that corresponded with patients' various diagnosis dates.

The men also reported the use of any medication that might interfere with male hormones, and the researchers took that into account.

Balding and prostate cancer risk: Findings

Men with any significant hair loss at the age of 30 had a 29% reduced risk of prostate cancer, the researchers found.

Then Wright's team looked at a smaller subgroup -- men who were balding in their 30s at both the top of the head and the forehead -- and were over age 60 at the reference date.
In this subgroup, he found a risk reduction of 45%.