hormonal therapy
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A diagnosis of prostate cancer raises the question for patients and their physicians as to how the tumor will behave.
BOSTON -- Appropriately selected prostate cancer patients, including older men and men with small, low-risk tumors, may safely defer treatment for many years with no adverse consequences, according to a new study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), the study appears online today.
Men with coronary artery disease-induced congestive heart failure or heart attack who receive hormone therapy before or along with radiation therapy for treatment of prostate cancer have an associated increased risk of death, according to a study in the August 26 issue of JAMA.
SEATTLE -- While long-term tamoxifen use among breast cancer survivors decreases their risk of developing the most common, less aggressive type of second breast cancer, such use is associated with a more than four-fold increased risk of a more aggressive, difficult-to-treat type of cancer in the breast opposite, or contralateral, to the initial tumor.
Prostate cancer patients who receive brachytherapy and remain free of disease for five years or greater are unlikely to have a recurrence at 10 years, according to a study in the July 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).
Brachytherapy is the placement of radioactive sou
Researchers have found that adding only six months of hormone therapy to external beam radiation therapy for localized prostate cancer increased patients' likelihood of surviving to five years by 10 percent. These findings challenge the current treatment gold standard -- two months of radiation followed by three years of hormone therapy -- a regimen associated with negative side effects significantly impacting quality of life.
Early results from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine study may determine if drugs called Cox-2 inhibitors, a newer type of non-aspirin pain medicine now widely prescribed for arthritis symptoms, may benefit men with recurrent prostate cancer. The new findings demonstrate that Cox-2 inhibitors may have anti-tumor effects on prostate cancer and may slow disease progression in men whose PSA blood tests indicate the cancer's recurrence, the researchers said. Findings were presented June 6 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting.
Scientists have uncovered a cruel twist of fate in men who have advanced prostate cancer.
Doctors have long known that the medications they use to treat prostate cancer effectively for one to two years inevitably fail, leaving patients with few treatment options as the disease progresses, killing more than 30,000 men in the United States alone every year. Now scientists have discovered that at least one such medication has a completely unexpected side effect: The compound actually turns on a molecule known to cause cancerous cells to grow.
