Prostate Cancer Treatment Could Potentially Double Patients' Life Expectancy
Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer among males and the third leading cause of death in men. Those afflicted by the disease may want to benefit from the breakthrough made by a British study which could more than double the life expectancy of sufferers.
A clinical trial run by Cancer Research U.K. has found that giving patients two drug treatments at once cuts progression of the disease. It is believed to be the biggest cancer study in the world which gathered 1,900 men at various stages of prostate cancer.
The age of the men averaged 67 at the start of the trial. Around 52 percent of them had cancer that had spread around the body while the 48 percent had cancer confined to the prostate and pelvis. About half of the men diagnosed are eligible for hormone therapy which blocks the action of male sex hormones.
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Half of the subjects were given the standard hormone therapy treatment known as androgendeprivation therapy (ADT) while the other half were made to take ADT plus the drug abiraterone. Usually, abiraterone is given to men who have stopped responding to ADT, but the study found that giving it much earlier, and in combination with ADT, had much stronger benefits.
It reduced the risk of dying by 37 percent and lowered the chance of the cancer getting worse by 71 percent. Aside from the improvement in the survival rate, also noted was a reduction of bone complications, a major problem in prostate cancer, by more than half.
The latest results join the growing successes made in prostate cancer research. Recently, the Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden Hospital determined the effectiveness of olaparib in treating the disease. Olaparib is a cancer inhibitor drug and is also used to treat ovarian and breast cancer among women.
