prostate-report.org

Fertility Issues In Patients With Prostate Cancer

PSA screening helps doctors to detect prostate cancer (CaP) in men at younger ages. In the online issue of the BJU International, a research team from Norway address the issues of fertility as related to prostate cancer therapies.In Norway, the percentage of CaP patients aged  under 60years has increased from 4% in 1986 to 11% in 2006.

Patients experience scattered testicular irradiation during pelvic external beam radiotherapy with short-term androgen-deprivation therapy. Researchers clam that this irradiation causes transient azoospermia. However, data on sperm counts following radiotherapy are lacking. Brachytherapy may preserve spermatogenesis but reduce seminal fluid volume.

Treatment options for infertility following the above procedures or radical prostatectomy include semen cryopreservation prior to CaP therapy or sperm extraction from the epididymis or testes afterwards. Younger patients are advised of the option to cryopreserved sperm. This can then be used for intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

Tags: fertility, sperm cryopreservation, transient azoospermia

New prostate cancer pill could save thousands of lives

A NEW pill could potentially save the lives of thousands of prostate cancer sufferers, eliminating the need for damaging therapies.

Trials of the new drug have shown that it can shrink tumours in up to 80 per cent of cases, and can end the need for damaging chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Britain’s Daily Mail reports.

Experts hailed the advance as potentially the biggest in the field of prostate cancer for decades, capable of saving many thousands of lives.

Scientists believe the technique could also be effective on other tumours, such as breast and bowel cancers.

The drug, abiraterone, was discovered by researchers at the Royal Marsden Hospital in southwest London.

Their leader, Dr Johann de Bono, said patients there had been able to control the disease with just four pills a day and very few side-effects.

Abiraterone fight prostate cancer by blocking chemicals in the body which help in the production of the male hormones.

It is expected to be widely available in three years, but until then can be obtained only as part of clinical trials.

Bone Drug Reduces Fractures In Men Having Hormone Therapy For Prostate Cancer

Drugmaker Amgen Inc announced yesterday, Monday, that a large trial of its bone drug denosumab increased bone density and cut fractures in men with non-metastatic prostate cancer who were having hormone blocking therapy. A side effect of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), which stops the male hormones feeding the cancer, is weaker bones and increased risk of fracture.

According to the National Cancer Institute, about half of prostate cancer patients undergo hormone therapy at some stage.

According to the company, the results were comparable with other studies on bone mineral density in women undergoing hormone therapy (aromatase inhibitor) for breast cancer and in post menopausal women with low bone mass.

According to the American Cancer Society, more tha 186,000 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and the disease will kill nearly 29,000.

The Wall Street Journal reported that analysts have welcomed the trial but that the results “don’t ensure similar success in a study of the drug in women with osteoporosis”.

Comorbidity reduces benefits of androgen suppression in prostate cancer

The addition of androgen suppression therapy to radiation therapy for treatment of prostate cancer fails to improve survival among men with serious co-existing illness, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association for January 23.

Recent evidence suggests that androgen suppression therapy increases the risk of cardiovascular events in men of advanced age, lead author Dr. Anthony V. D’Amico of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and his associates note.

To examine the interaction between comorbidity and treatment outcome, they obtained long-term follow-up data from a trial in which men with prostate cancer had been randomly assigned to receive radiation therapy alone or radiation therapy and androgen suppression therapy combined.

The best treatment options prostate cancer under investigation

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. Over the last 30 years prostate cancer rates have tripled, largely due to the increasing use of PSA testing, which has led to more diagnoses.

Recently, a new Cancer Research UK clinical trial has been launched to investigate the best treatment options for men who have had surgery for early stage prostate cancer.

Researchers want to understand, firstly whether further treatments should be given to all men and for how long, regardless of their PSA levels. And secondly, when radiotherapy should be given and whether it is more effective to use it alone, or to combine it with hormone therapy

The research team states that use of these treatments varies across the country and doctors are uncertain about which treatment is best for all men.

Sexual Life After Prostate Removal

One of the most feared side effects of therapy for prostate cancer is the impact on sexual health. According to National Cancer Institute in US, about 219.000 men have been diagnosed prostate cancer every year and almost a half of those men had prostate removal. A year after removal, 97% patients were able to get penetration.

But, last year, George Washington University and New York University said that less than half of men who had prostate removal feel their sexual life back to normal in a year. read full article

Possible link found between diagnostic radiation and prostate cancer

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have shown an association between certain past diagnostic radiation procedures and an increased risk of young-onset prostate cancer - a rare form of prostate cancer which affects about 10 per cent of all men diagnosed with the disease.

The study showed that men who had a hip or pelvic X-ray or barium enema 10 years previously were two and a half times more likely to develop prostate cancer than the general population. And the link appeared to be stronger in men who had a family history of the disease.

Drug prevents bone loss in prostate cancer

In a study, Amgen Inc’s experimental drug Denosumab reduced the risk of osteoporosis and fracture in men being treated with prostate cancer medicines that can cause bone loss, the company said on Monday.
 
But investors remain focused on upcoming data that will show whether the drug is effective in the larger market of osteoporosis patients, and Amgen shares were little changed in afternoon trading.

Denosumab — a bioengineered antibody that targets a protein involved with bone-destroying cells called osteoclasts — is seen as key to Amgen’s future now that growth of its flagship anemia drug franchise has waned due to safety concerns.

Men receiving denosumab also experienced less than half the incidence of new vertebral fractures than those receiving the placebo, Amgen said.

Denosumab is given twice yearly by injection.

Tags: bone loss, prostate cancer

From chemotherapy to exercise therapy

The standard weapons in the fight against cancer - surgery, chemotherapy and radiation - may soon be joined by something far simpler: exercise.

New research shows that regular physical activity helps reduce the risk of recurrence of breast cancer and slows the advance of prostate cancer.

Exercise offers many advantages: It fights the fatigue caused by treatment, calms anxiety and helps survivors feel better about themselves.

Researchers locate and image prostate cancer as it spreads to lymph nodes

Using an engineered common cold virus, UCLA researchers delivered a genetic payload to prostate cancer cells that allowed them, using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), to locate the diseased cells as they spread to the lymph nodes, the first place prostate cancer goes before invading other organs.

The tiny cancer metastases in the pelvic lymph nodes are very difficult to find using conventional imaging tools such as CT scanning. This discovery could aid oncologists in finding the cancer’s spread earlier, when it’s more treatable, and before it invades distant organs, said Lily Wu, a researcher at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and the senior author of the study.

The next step for Wu and her colleagues is linking the non-invasive imaging advance with a treatment component, activating a toxic agent in the genetic payload to kill the spreading cancer cells. Wu hopes one day to be able to find tiny prostate cancer metastases in patients and kill them at the same time, watching it all on a PET scanner. She currently is refining this image-guided therapy in her lab in mouse models.

The spread of prostate cancer to the pelvic lymph nodes is the most reliable indicator that the patient will have a poor prognosis, with disease recurrence and progression likely. Accurately assessing pelvic lymph node involvement in patients is critical in planning their treatment, Wu said.

Currently, physicians don’t know if a treatment is attacking cancer cells until, using traditional imaging, they see a decrease in tumor size, an insensitive approach that can take weeks and months. And if the treatment isn’t working, the patient is exposed to a toxic therapy that isn’t helping them. If Wu is successful, an oncologist would know within days if the cancer has spread and whether the treatment is killing the cancer.

The study appears July 11, 2008 in the early, online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine.