Hormones and Prostate Cancer: What's Next?

This presentation briefly reviews existing perspectives on hormones and prostate cancer and discusses reasons for inconsistent results in epidemiologic studies summarizes methodological issues related to the validity of serum-based studies and provides specific suggestions for future studies. The focus is primarily on conceptual and methodological issues. Overall the hormonal hypothesis remains one of the most important hypotheses in prostate cancer etiology. Although epidemiologic data regarding the role of hormones are still inconclusive there are many intriguing leads. More complete methodological data state-of-the-art hormone assays sound epidemiologic design and a more thorough analytical approach should yield critical data and insights to help clarify further the role of hormones in prostate cancer. This new generation of studies may determine ultimately whether racial/ethnic differences in hormonal levels and in genetic susceptibility to hormone-metabolizing genes can help explain the very large racial/ethnic differences in prostate cancer risk.