Shortening androgen deprivation therapy can boost quality of life for prostate cancer patients
A shorter course of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) can improve quality of life for high-risk prostate cancer patients by helping them recover a normal testosterone level in a shorter amount of time, according to research presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s (ASTRO’s) 56th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
ADT, which is commonly used as an ancillary treatment for prostate cancer, reduces the levels of androgen hormones to prevent the growth of prostate cancer cells.
Lead author Abdenour Nabid, MD, a radiation oncologist at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke and an associate professor at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, and colleagues sought to compare testosterone recovery in patients who received radiation therapy (RT) and an 18-month course of ADT with patients who received RT and a 36-month course of ADT.
The researchers gathered data from 561 patients in the PCS IV clinical trials, a multi-center, randomized phase III trial in Canada. The 18-month ADT group featured 289 patients, while 272 patients received 36 months of ADT. In both groups, RT began four months after the start of ADT.
Results showed that after a median follow up of 84 months, 55.7 percent of patients in the 18-month ADT group had recovered normal testosterone levels compared with 44.9 percent of patients in the prolonged ADT group. Among all patients who recovered normal levels, median time to testosterone recovery was shorter for those in the 18-month ADT group compared with the 36-month ADT group at 47.2 months vs. 73.2 months.
Using a pair of questionnaires to measure quality of life, Nabid and colleagues found that more than half of the items assessed by the questionnaires improved significantly, with several of the items being clinically relevant.
“There is a major advantage for the use of [18-month] ADT vs [36-month] ADT since a higher proportion of patients recover a normal testosterone level in a much shorter time without apparent detriment in long term outcomes,” wrote the authors in the study abstract.
Since the current guideline for ADT duration is between two and three years, Nabid suggested in a statement that a good first step would be for physicians to choose a two year course of treatment until the final results of the ongoing phase III PCS IV trial are obtained.
Evan joined TriMed in 2011, writing primarily for Health Imaging. Prior to diving into medical journalism, Evan worked for the Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis. He also has worked in public relations and education. Evan studied journalism at the University of Missouri, with an emphasis on broadcast media.