| Summary: | Thesis summary A number of studies have addressed the role of genitourinary infections in prostate cancer (PC) pathogenesis since 1980's. Identification of an infectious agent responsible for prostatic carcinogenesis would make it possible to screen for and prevent the disease in exposed populations. In our project, we investigated the prevalence of antibodies to selected genit- ourinary pathogens in patients with histopathological evidence of PC and in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia. We were testing the hypothesis that PC patients would be more likely to harbor antibodies than controls. This would favor the in- fectious theory of PC initiation. In case of human papillomavirus (HPV), tissue ana- lyses were performed aimed at the detection of HPV DNA in prostatic tissue samples. To our knowledge, we were the first to look for a potential association between PC and Mycoplasma hominis/Ureaplasma urealyticum infection. Men with PC were more likely to have U. urealyticum antibodies. We analyzed the subset of PC patients to find whether infection may change PC biological behavior, with a null result. Other data obtained in our study support the negative findings from the majority of previously published studies. Besides the abovementioned results, an original contribution of this work lies in the...
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