Doctors have just started asking this question, but early evidence from several studies at Johns Hopkins suggests that the answer is yes. Some men get BPH because they’ve lived long enough for their prostates to enlarge to the point where treatment is needed. But a small number of men—about 7 percent—get it because they have inherited a gene that predisposes them to prostate enlargement. Men who develop BPH at a younger age—in their forties, fifties and early sixties—are more likely to have inherited this gene.
In one Johns Hopkins investigation, scientists studied men aged 64 and younger with notable prostate enlargement. They also studied their relatives and family histories. (The theory behind the age cut-off here is that early age of onset tends to be a marker for hereditary disease.) They found that the male relatives of these men were four times as likely as other men to require a prostatectomy to treat BPH—in other words, they were more likely to develop BPH that was severe enough to need major treatment. And brothers of these men were six times as likely as other men to need surgery to treat BPH.
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