Hormone Therapy Helps Prevent Relapse of Local Prostate Cancer
Short-term hormone therapy that decreases testosterone levels and is given before and during radiation treatment, reduces the risk of relapse of advanced localized prostate cancer.
Testosterone reduction is also known as androgen deprivation, and is a known treatment for prostate cancer that has spread throughout the body. Until recently, scientists were unclear on how the treatment would work on cancer that was still localized in the prostate.
Researchers at the University of Newcastle, Australia, recently performed a study on 270 men 270 men who were assigned to radiation therapy alone, 265 assigned to 3 months of anti-androgen hormone therapy, and 267 assigned to 6 months of the hormone treatment. All the men had locally advanced prostate cancer, giving the researchers a chance to study the effects of androgen deprivation.
Compared with radiation therapy alone, androgen deprivation was associated with a reduced rate of cancer progression at 5 years, with a reduction in risk of 44 percent for 3 months of hormone treatment and 58 percent with 6 months of treatment.
The researchers stated that they still need to do a follow up to estimate the exact magnitude of the survival rate gained with six months of androgen deprivation.
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