A New Prostate Cancers Treatment Strategy

A New Prostate Cancers Treatment Strategy.
Conventional prudence has it that pongy levels of testosterone help prostate cancers grow. However, a new, small swatting suggests that a treatment strategy called bipolar androgen therapy - where patients alternative between low and high levels of testosterone - might make prostate tumors more responsive to labarum hormonal therapy. As the researchers explained, the primary treatment for advanced prostate cancer is hormonal therapy, which lowers levels of testosterone to stop the tumor from growing. But there's a problem: Prostate cancer cells inevitably worst the therapy by increasing their ability to suck up any unused testosterone in the body.

The new strategy forces the tumor to respond again to higher testosterone levels, portion to reverse its resistance to standard therapy, the researchers say. If confirmed in several ceaseless larger trials, "this could lead to a new treatment approach" for prostate cancers that have grown unaffected to hormonal therapy, said lead researcher Dr Michael Schweizer, an aid professor of oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

So "It needs to be stressed that bipolar androgen treatment is not ready for adoption into routine clinical practice, since these studies have not been completed. The backfire was published Jan 7, 2015 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. For the study, 16 men with hormone therapy-resistant prostate cancer received bipolar androgen therapy. Of these patients, seven had their cancer go into remission. In four men, tumors shrank, and in one man, tumors disappeared completely, the researchers report.

Overall, "50 percent of patients had declines in their PSA prostate determined antigen and 50 percent had shrinkage of their cancer". PSA levels are a guide extraordinary of prostate cancer activity, as prudent in a blood test. Senior den maker Dr Samuel Denmeade is co-director of the prostate cancer program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He believes the creative approach has benefits beyond its efficacy on cancer cells.

That's because restoring a man's testosterone levels also reduced the side belongings of hormone therapy, which include mood swings and not being able to have intercourse. "For the most part, men said they felt great. Most of the men felt relish they had more energy. Men on hormone therapy who couldn't have sex could have sex again, so they were very happy about that". And although testosterone levels alternated between high-priced and low, the men seemed to tolerate the treatment well.

Denmeade stressed that this treatment is not a cure, but a nature to make men feel better and extend the time standard hormonal therapy remains effective. "Maybe men will function longer, but we don't know that yet. According to Denmeade, men enrolled in the meditate on didn't have any symptoms from their cancer, such as pain, and had been on standard hormonal cure for an average of four years. They had also suffered a side effect of standard hormonal analysis - impotence - for at least one year.

Bipolar androgen therapy is probably not for "men who have not yet had any remedying for prostate cancer". Moreover, the long-term effects or dangers of the therapy aren't yet known. Only longer, larger trials will remedy uncover any risks associated with the treatment. And one wonderful worries that alternating testosterone levels could actually shorten men's lives. "A cancer stall could escape and grow, as happened in breast cancer when this method was tried with estrogen, causing antediluvian death," said Dr Anthony D'Amico, chief of radiation oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston english. D'Amico agreed with the scan authors that bipolar androgen group therapy is not ready to be used in clinical practice and doctors should wait for the results of ongoing trials before oblation it to men.