Prostate Health Archive

New research has shaken up a time-honored strategy for treating advanced prostate cancer that’s begun to metastasize, or spread. Doctors ordinarily treat these cases with systemic therapies designed to kill off metastatic tumors appearing throughout the body. But they don’t use local therapy to treat the primary tumor in the prostate. That’s because the primary tumor — unlike the metastases that it spawns — is rarely lethal. So doctors have been reluctant to give local therapy, such as radiation to the prostate or surgery to remove the organ, if it’s not going to improve the odds of survival. Now investigators are turning that assumption on its head. According to their findings, men who received local therapy while being treated for metastatic prostate cancer lived longer than those who didn’t, “and that makes a case for being more aggressive in how we manage patients who present with metastatic disease,” said Dr. Chad Rusthoven, a radiation oncologist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, and the study’s first author.

Researchers believe that a non-invasive screening test that can identify genetic markers for high-grade prostate cancer in urine may eventually reduce the number of prostate biopsies needed. However, experts also caution that while the number of non-invasive tests for prostate cancer diagnosis is growing, these are still early days in their development.

Many men with prostate cancer benefit from active surveillance, in which treatment doesn’t begin unless the cancer spreads. There has been some debate about whether this strategy is safe for men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. A new study suggests that this type of cancer is more likely to spread than previously thought — but active surveillance can still be a good option for many intermediate-risk men.

Men diagnosed with slow-growing prostate tumors that likely won’t be harmful during their lifetimes can often avoid immediate treatment. Instead, they can have their tumor monitored using a strategy called active surveillance. With this approach, doctors perform periodic checks for tumor progression and start treatment only if the cancer begins to metastasize, or spread. Active […]

Long-term hormonal therapy, which blocks the effect of testosterone on prostate tumors, was once reserved for prostate cancer that has spread. But recent research has found that it had enormous benefits for men with earlier stages of prostate cancer, slashing their risks of metastasis and death from prostate cancer. However, some questions remain — for example, exactly how long to use “long-term hormonal therapy” is still up for debate.

Hormonal therapy, also known as androgen-deprivation therapy, can be a powerful weapon in the fight against prostate cancer because it deprives malignant cells of the fuel they need to grow. Androgens — meaning the family of male sex hormones that includes testosterone — contribute to physical characteristics such as a deeper voice, thick facial hair, and increased muscle strength and bone mass. But when prostate cancer develops, testosterone also contributes to tumor growth and progression. Depending on the specific treatment used, hormonal therapy can either stop the body from making testosterone or prevent it from interacting with cancer cells.

It’s well known that defective BRCA genes can increase a woman’s chances of developing breast, ovarian, and other cancers. But these same gene changes can also increase a man’s risk of dying from prostate cancer. Now, a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine has shown that men with prostate cancer who […]

The same BRCA mutations that increase a woman’s risk of breast and ovarian cancers can also increase a man’s risk of dying from prostate cancer. Recently, an ovarian cancer drug intended for BRCA-positive women has shown impressive results in BRCA-positive men with metastatic prostate cancer. This drug, and others like it, could provide another, much-needed treatment option for men with advanced prostate cancer.

A new study confirms that active surveillance is a safe and reasonable alternative to immediate treatment for prostate cancer. In recently published study that followed 1,300 men, the prostate cancer survival rate after 10-15 years of active surveillance, was 99%. For some men, a strong discomfort with “living with cancer” may steer them away from postponing treatment in favor of careful monitoring.