A man in the advanced prostate cancer online support group has asked, “Why the radiation (external beam to relieve bone pain from prostate cancer and to protect the bones from fractures) is given in so many "mini" doses rather than one or two larger doses. The answer is it doesn't necessarily have to be delivered [...]
Randy Sheffield, a member of the Malecare Advanced Prostate Cancer Online support group recently has had his fight with advanced prostate cancer made even more complex when he developed Osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ). ONJ is an uncommon but terrible side effect of taking bisphosphonates. Randy wrote a warning to all the members of the [...]
Somehow I have been negligent and not let people know that I have written and posted a major update of my “Guide to Advanced Prostate Cancer.” As in the past, it is available as a free download from the Malecare web site. Helping me to update the book was prostate cancer survivor Craig Pynn and [...]
As prostate cancer progresses so does the pain we will suffer. In the normal course we will also progress on to different drugs to help control the pain. Opioids are one of the most common of these drugs prescribed to help control pain. As with all drugs opioids have many side effects. One of the [...]
Provenge or Sipuleucel-T (sip-T) remains not well understood by many prostate cancer survivors as well as some treating physicians. Because Provenge does not immediately control PSA or disease progression it creates a situation where some individuals are skeptical as to its efficacy. This is true despite the clear survival advantage demonstrated in clinical trials. This [...]
It is generally believed that combination hormone therapy (ADT 2, 3 or 4) is superior to mono-therapy (with just one drug). With this in mind researchers investigated the survival of hormone-naïve prostate cancer survivors diagnosed with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) over 500 ng/ml. They extracted data of prostate cancer survivors from the Japan Study Group of [...]
Bayer HealthCare and Orion Corporation (a Finnish pharmaceutical company) have announced that they have begun enrollment in a randomized Phase III clinical trial of a new investigational treatment for men with advanced prostate cancer. ODM-201 is a novel, oral androgen receptor inhibitor. The trial named ARAMIS trial is a randomized, Phase III, multi-center, double-blind, placebo-controlled [...]
Yesterday I wrote about the cognitive effects of hormone therapy (ADT), today’s topic is about depression in men on ADT. It is commonly known that men on ADT often experience many physical and psychological side effects of the treatment. One of these side effects to ADT may be associated with increased risk for depression, but [...]
Expected and extraordinary news today on the new treatment front. Medivation and Astellas’ Xtandi (enzalutamide) was approved for use in men with castrate resistant prostate cancer. The new FDA approved label for Xtandi says that it is for the treatment of men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. This label is basically the same as for [...]
I really thought we had gotten over this problem, but an article appearing in a recent report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology indicates that the age old problem that often our doctors fail to supply adequate pain medications to advanced cancer survivors because a fear of drug addiction This attitude still hampers good survivorship [...]
