A Specific Form Of Baldness Could Be Linked To Aggressive Prostate Cancer

A new study found that men with moderate baldness in the front and crown at age 45 had about a 40 percent increased risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer than men with no baldness at that age.

In the study, published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology yesterday, researchers analyzed 39,070 men from the United States Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial. None of the men had a cancer diagnosis at the time and were aged 55-74. They were asked to look at the types of balding and recall their own hair-loss patterns at age 45. The researchers followed up, at a median of 2.78 years later, to discover 1,138 prostate cancer cases, with 571 of them being aggressive (stage III or greater and/or fatal). Frontal plus moderate vertex baldness (a V or VI on the Norwood-Hamilton scale) at age 45 was linked with aggressive prostate cancer (but not non-aggressive prostate cancer). There was no significant link to prostate cancer for men with other classes of baldness or no baldness.