Side effects, or what are known as co-morbidities, often discourage men who have metastatic prostate cancer from continuing with chemotherapy (docetaxel). The question often asked is there a relationship between having side effects and the ultimate efficacy of the chemotherapy? In other words does having side effects have an effect on overall survival? To answer [...]
Clinical trials have shown that there is an overall survival and radiographic progression-free survival benefit derived from abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) in the treatment of men with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). A new retrospective study published online, ahead of print, shows this trend is true regardless of a man's Gleason score at diagnosis, despite [...]
Once a clinical trial has been completed, especially when the trial is positive, researchers will “data mine” the published information. The published results provide additional opportunities to evaluate the data in different ways than the trial was originally designed. This new data can be very interesting and informative, however it also needs to be considered [...]
Understanding how to best sequence and combine our new drugs to treat advanced prostate cancer includes the most discussed issue, efficacy. We want to know if a special order or a special combination of the approved drugs will nake a difference in both our quality of life (QoL) as well as how survival. Often [...]
Because of the large amount of prostate cancer screening there has been a major shift in initial staging in prostate cancer in western countries, with the incidence of metastases at diagnosis decreasing from over 50% in the 1970s to currently less than 10%. Despite this very significant drop in late stage diagnoses prostate cancer is [...]