Prostate Cancer Risk Factors: Understanding Age and Prostate Cancer
Simply stated – age is among the strongest prostate cancer risk factors. In fact, because 80% of diagnosed cases occurring in men ages 65 and older, prostate cancer is generally considered a disease of older men. Although the age-related increase in prostate cancer parallels the increase in total cancer rates that occurs in the U.S. with increasing age, it does occur at younger ages, but is very unusual, at least before the age of 50.
Prostate cancer risk factors are thought to increase exponentially after the age of 50, at least partially because men are more likely to be checked for prostate cancer at older ages. During their 40s and 50s, men have only about a 1 in 80 chance of being diagnosed with prostate cancer in any given year; in their 60s and 70s, the chance of diagnosis rises to about one in 6. To fully understand the age and prostate cancer link, review our chart outlining age-adjusted incidence rates in 1996:
| Incidence Rate of Prostate Cancer in 1996 (per 100,000) |
Age Range |
| 23 | 45–49 |
| 103 | 50–54 |
| 273 | 55–59 |
| 568 | 60–64 |
| 951 | 65–69 |
| 1,255 | 70–74 |
