Clinical trials for treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer often don’t include men who are considered very elderly (aged over 80 years). So, even if we know that a treatment is tolerable and effective in the average man, we can not assume that it would also be in the very elderly, especially in reference [...]
According to a news release from MD Anderson they have recently completed a study that shows that combining two separate chemotherapy agents is more effective than sequencing them one after another. The current standard of care for the cytotoxic chemotherapy agents used to treat prostate cancer is to treat men with advanced metastatic castration-resistant prostate [...]
There was a study published in the journal Nature that described a promising new combination therapy for the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancers that are non-responsive to chemotherapy. The study is entitled "Immunosuppressive Plasma Cells Impede T-Cell Dependent Immunogenic Chemotherapy." The study was conducted at the University of California, San Diego. Prostate cancers [...]
Many men express great hesitation to move to chemotherapy with both docetaxel (taxotere) and cabazitaxel (Jevtana) because of the side effects which can include alopecia (hair loss), nail changes, neuropathy, and dysgeusia (a distortion of the sense of taste). A group of researchers hypothesized that the adverse side effects (AE) of these two chemotherapy drugs, [...]
It is vital that you take an active role in making sure that you are going to receive the correct IV treatment and injections. Mistakes do happen, protect yourself. Make sure that you personally double check to confirm you're receiving the correct treatment. Don't sit back and rely on another person, errors do occur and [...]
Today most doctors rely on their personal evaluation or objective response criteria (OR) of a man to know when docetaxel chemotherapy has stopped working. The earlier this determination can be accurately made the quicker an alternative treatment can e put into place. Personal evaluations without any validated tools are unreliable and never consistent among doctors. [...]
Last year after the ASCO meeting in Chicago I declared that there was one particular presentation of the CHAARTED trial that would be a game changer for the treatment of newly diagnosed men with very significant prostate cancer. The game changer was that men diagnosed with significant disease and who were still ADT naive (not [...]
Chemotherapy for prostate cancer is still limited to just two drugs, docetaxel (Taxotere) and cabazitaxel (Jevtana). Both of these chemotherapy drugs are taxanes, but they seem to be very different in their mode of action. A study published online in Clinical Cancer Research, indicates that cabazitaxel might be more effective for some men than docetaxel. [...]
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 [...]
Abiraterone acetate (AA) or Zytiga has demonstrated a survival benefit in the pre-chemotherapy setting for men with advanced prostate cancer that has become castrate resistant (mCRPC). As a result it is in widespread clinical use in the United States prior to the use of chemotherapy with docetaxel. Since its FDA approval post chemotherapy there has [...]
