The results of an NIH-funded, large-scale randomized clinical trial on men's adjustment to prostate cancer found that the effects of educational and supportive group interventions had specific benefits for men.

The results will be published in Health Psychology, which is the leading journal in the field and published by the American Psychological Association.

The study was conducted by Stephen J. Lepore, Professor of Health Education at Teachers College, and by other researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh.

This was the first study to examine the effects of education and support group interventions on men's adjustment to prostate cancer. Many prior studies have shown beneficial effects of such groups on women's adjustment to cancer, but none had been conducted exclusively with men.

Prostate cancer is the most common solid tumor malignancy and a leading cause of cancer death in American men. The latest statistics suggest that one in five men will develop prostate cancer in his lifetime. The majority of men afflicted with prostate cancer survive for many years, but they may suffer from a host of adverse effects of the disease or its treatments. From the researcher's point of view, it was critical, then, to develop interventions that can mitigate the adverse effects of this disease and enhance patients' quality of life.

Lepore spoke about the specific findings. "We found that men with cancer can benefit from education and support groups. The biggest concerns that men have when contemplating treatments for prostate cancer are: Will I be able to be as active after treatments as before my cancer? Will I have problems in sexual and urinary functioning? There were two particularly strong and interesting findings from the study: men who received both education and support from peers were the most likely to remain employed in the year after their treatment and were the least likely to be bothered by sexual problems associated with their prostate cancer treatments.

Another interesting finding was that the interventions appeared to reduce social disparities in men's adjustment to prostate cancer treatments. Generally, men with less formal education had poorer health habits and more problems in their physical functioning following prostate cancer treatments than their more educated peers, but when they participated in the group interventions, men with less formal education tended to show the greatest improvements in health behaviors and adjustment. The interventions may have compensated for deficits in access to information or social support in men with less formal education.

Lepore said that the results of the study imply that the burden of prostate cancer is particularly high among poorer, less-educated and minority men, who also have an elevated probability of contracting, suffering with and dying from prostate cancer. Poorer, less-educated and minority men also have less knowledge about prostate cancer both before and after they get the disease suggesting that educational interventions should be especially fruitful with this population.

"What was exciting about this work is that we showed that those people actually benefit tremendously from this very simple, fairly inexpensive intervention. And so what this suggests to me is that we should be promoting these kinds of educational and support groups for the neediest people-those who have the greatest unmet needs. And we have tools to identify who they are," Lepore said.

Published Monday, Aug. 25, 2003