A new study that evaluated 20,000 patients with several types of cancer has found that African-American men and women are more likely to die of their cancers even when they receive equal care. Included in this study were men with prostate cancer.

Previously, much of the focus on why African-Americans had higher mortality rates from cancer had been on disparities in the availability or quality of health care. The results of this study suggest that, even when care is equal across racial/ethnic boundaries, African-Americans still tend to have a higher chance of dying from their cancer.

More research will need to be done to determine what exactly accounts for the difference in cancer mortality rates that exists, but this research offers some interesting insights at the very least.

The full study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by scientists from Loyola University.

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The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nutrition and food industry watchdog organization, has been openly critical as of late of an ad for Bayer's One-A-Day Men's Vitamins.

The point of contention comes when the vitamin commercial, regarding prostate cancer, states: "Now there's something that you can do that may help reduce your risk. Along with your regular doctor checkups, switch to One-A-Day Men's, a complete multivitamin plus selenium, which emerging research suggests may reduce the risk of prostate cancer."

The CSPI and other organizations are finding issue with this statement because of a large government-sponsored study involving 35,000 men which showed no decreased risk of prostate cancer in men taking selenium.

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New research has shown that capsules containing polyphenols, extracts derived from green tea, might be able to slow down the progression of prostate cancer.

In the study, 26 men with diagnosed prostate cancer were given four capsules of polyphenols per day for one month. At the end of the month, the men had lower levels of three proteins that are known to increase the growth rate of tumors.

While the green tea capsules resulted in lower levels of these proteins and thus would, theoretically, slow down the growth of prostate cancer, it's not clear if tumors would actually shrink or would just grow slower than normal.

Either way, this is a very interesting development. Hopefully we'll see more and more positive research such as this.

Recent analysis of data comparing prostate cancer death rates across Britain has uncovered that prostate cancer mortality can differ by nearly 5 times from one constituency to the next.

This has led politicians and others in Britain to label the apparent disparity a 'Post Code Lottery' in reference to the fact that, seemingly, men lucky enough to live in a certain postal code may have much improved chances of surviving their prostate cancer when compared to men unlucky enough to live in a different postal code.

No one is quite sure as to what the true cause of these large geographic disparities is, but plenty of people are weighing in with their opinions and the whole thing has caused quite a stir in the UK. Several politicians and other national leaders have used the news to offer their own prescriptions for fixing the problem (and for fixing healthcare in general).

Interestingly, studies like this one have been done in the United States and elsewhere with similarly startling results showing large differences in prostate cancer mortality from one geographic area to the next.