The Myths and Realities of Prostate Cancer Chemoprevention – A Journey Through Scientific Evidences

Abstract

The goals of primary chemoprevention of any disease include decreasing the incidence of disease, reducing treatment-related adverse events, cutting down the cost of treatment and bringing down the mortality due to the disease. Increased prevalence of prostate cancer and identification of large numbers of newly detected disease due to the availability of better screening measures, long latency of the disease and peculiar molecular basis of pathogenesis make prostate cancer an attractive target of chemoprevention. This article reviews the experimental and epidemiological data available from 1998 to 2023 on the effectiveness, safety and toxicity of various nutritional and other agents proposed to be used for prostate cancer chemoprevention either to reduce the incidence of this cancer and/or slow down the disease progression. No single agent has been categorically proved to be the best for chemoprevention of prostate cancer as of now. Although majority of studies do not propose adopting chemoprevention in the entire elderly men population, it may be ideal that the men at higher risk of contracting prostate cancer like those having positive family history would be the best choice for implementing chemoprevention.