Symptoms presentation and aggressiveness pattern of prostate cancer in a Moroccan population

Abstract

Around the world, prostate cancer is one of the leading types of cancer in men. Indeed, according to the most recent reports, approximately 1.27 (7.1%) million new cases were diagnosed with an estimated 358,989 (3.8%) deaths. Prostate cancer manifests in a varied incidence according to the ethnic-geographic origin of patients. In Morocco, it is a public health issue regarding its frequency and severity, being the second most common male cancer with 3990 (15.8%) new cases recorded in 2018. This work aims at depicting the pattern of prostate cancer presentation in the Moroccan population for the first time, in regard to some clinical and pathological features along with aggressiveness nature in patients followed up in Mohammed V military hospital of Rabat which is a referral center. In this retrospective record-based study, the epidemiological, clinical, and histo-biological characteristics of 104 prostate cancer cases, at the time of diagnosis were assessed, such as age, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level, Gleason grade, symptomatic pattern. Data analysis was done by the software SPSS version 23 using the statistical test two-tailed Pearson Qui-square test and two-tailed independent t-test. The results show that the mean age at diagnosis is 68 years. The mean PSA level, prostate volume and PSAd (PSA density) levels were 70.08 ng/ml, 61 grams and 1.66 ng/ml/gm respectively. Half of the patients had a PSA level of less than 10 ng/ml and only 21.2% were accidentally discovered during systematic screening. Symptomatic patients were significantly associated with age ( P = 0.04) and with digital rectal examination (DRE) suspicion ( P = 0.03) at diagnosis. Our reports confirm that Moroccan men with prostate cancer have higher PSA, PSA density and aggressive Gleason grade at diagnosis and that symptoms presentation increase along with age and are significantly related to the abnormality of DRE.