Hormone hope for prostate cancer

Six months of hormone treatment combined with radiotherapy can double the survival chances of men with locally advanced prostate cancer, a study has shown.

Over a 10-year period, men who received the combination treatment were half as likely to die as those who were given radiotherapy alone.

Hormone therapy fights prostate cancer by preventing testosterone from fuelling tumours.

This is done either by blocking the male hormone’s effects or cutting off its supply.

But long-term use of hormone therapy, also known as androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), may have significant side-effects, including impotence, hot flushes, fatigue, high cholesterol, anaemia, osteoporosis and heart damage.

The new approach involved “neoadjuvant” use of ADT before and during radiotherapy (NADT).

It was tested in a trial which included 802 men with locally advanced prostate cancer who were either treated with radiotherapy alone, or three or six months of ADT plus radiotherapy.

Six months of ADT in conjunction with radiotherapy was associated with an 11per cent prostate cancer death rate over 10 years compared with 22 per cent for men treated with radiotherapy alone.

The chances of death due to any cause were reduced by a third, from 29 per cent to 43 per cent.

But three months of the combination treatment had no effect on death rates or the likelihood of cancer spreading.

Jim Denham, from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues reported their findings in an online edition of medical journal The Lancet Oncology.