The common belief is that if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer that has already developed metastases only a systemic treatment will provide a life extending benefit. In other cancers it has been shown that the treatment of the primary tumor improves survival (tumor debulking). To find out if, in fact radiotherapy treatment of the [...]
The Global Prostate Cancer Alliance requests your participation in a United Kingdom focused project regarding Prostate Cancer killing Black men at twice the rate as it does White descent. We want to understand how Black men in the UK manage their disease while facing this massive disparity. First are telephone interviews with Black men diagnosed with prostate cancer [...]
Periodically, some of the men in one of my support groups get locked into what they see as the importance of monitoring their C-reactive protein (CRP) serum levels to be able to predict their chances of having a Bio-Chemical Recurrence (BCR) (PSA only). The CRP measures levels of inflammation and we know that inflammation and [...]
One of the frustrations faced by men in the UK has been the Guideline that restrictes the use of chemotherapy (docetaxel) to only men who have already failed hormone therapy (ADT). This Guideline directly contradicts the current, cutting edge evidence that, in certain circumstances, earlier chemotherapy increases survival. The good news is that the NHS [...]
Once again we see what seems to be logical isn’t necessarily the way it actually works! In a surprising study result, it was shown that the use of intermittent androgen-deprivation therapy (IADT) for prostate cancer is not associated with fewer long-term adverse events than continuous ADT! Who would have guessed? We all thought that intermittent [...]
Survivorship has become a very important part of cancer care as more and more of us survive a longer time. If our cancer has gone into remission we still need additional care, both physical and mental care. An unanswered question in today’s healthcare delivery system is who should be providing the care, a primary care [...]
It is generally accepted that a complete biochemical response (BR) of a man’s PSA immediately after surgery is an indicator of optimal cancer control. Does this also hold true for men with lymph node invasion (LNI)? Researchers performed a single institution study of 319 men with prostate cancer and LNI who were treated with surgery [...]
ASCO GU has given us a number of interesting posters, some of which I have already written about in prior posts. Another of these posters (abstract 232) was about an analysis by Ruessel and colleagues describing cardiovascular events among men with prostate cancer using German claims data. The researchers, in a retrospective study, attempted to [...]
Another piece of information from the recent ASCO GU conference in San Francisco Researchers have found that adding statin drugs may prolong the sensitivity of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) To assess the effect of statins on abiraterone therapy, Dr Harshman, of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber [...]
African American men get more prostate cancer and more lethal forms of prostate cancer than men of other ethnicities. We assume that a combination of genetic differences, lifestyle, nutritional and medical access were the reasons for this disparity. Understanding the role of these different possible contributors is important if we are to be able to [...]
