We continue to stress the importance of PSA screening for high risk prostate cancer patients despite some recently published recommendations suggesting that patients by and large need not be screened. Patients who should be tested include those with a family history of prostate cancer and African Americans.To ignore the potential of aggressive prostate cancer in the future in this high risk group could lead to advanced prostate cancer which remains the most difficult to treat.
In prostate cancer research labs today the prime focus centers on controlling ?advanced disease. ?To date treatments that extend a patient?s life just a few months have been heralded as? remarkable achievements, so complex is this scientific endeavor.? Two exciting developments are now reported in this chase to control advanced prostate cancer and are raising high expectations.
The first is a new drug reported by NBC News Chief science and health correspondent Robert Bazell.? The drug, enzalutamide, is a pill that has been shown to help men with advanced prostate cancer live longer even if other treatments have not helped them.The lead investigator, Bazell says, is Dr. Howard Scher of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.? This study was carried out on some 1,200 men in 15 countries.? Details of the study can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine.? Bazell reports that men taking enzalutamide lived 37% longer on average.
The expectation is that the FDA is probably going to approve the drug within the next few months.? The pill is manufactured by the biotechnology firm Medivation and is likely to cost about $6,000 a month.? That?s of course a tidy sum for patients.? Like all these expensive drugs that emerge from the research lab how will it be received in these health care cost cutting days by health decision makers is the big question.? What the discoverers say and hope is that ways will be found to lower the initial costs if the drugs are used in what they say are?smarter ways.?
A second new announcement in treating advanced cancer is reported in the journal European Urology.? This study shows that when men who receive androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to fight the advanced disease are treated intermittently rather than on a continuous basis, they may be a lot better off.?? This intermittent process significantly showed improvement in men?s quality of life, particularly when it came to physical activity and sexual function.
The scientific team was led by Arto Salonen at Kuopio University in Finland.? The study drew a comparison of 554 advanced prostate cancer patients.All patients had PSA levels less than 20 ng/ml and were initially administered monthly doses of 3.6 g goserelin acetate every 28 days over 24 weeks whenever their PSA levels had reduced to less than 10 mg/ml.? They were then randomly assigned to either proceed with continuous or intermittent ADT medication.? The follow-up period was 65 months before ascertaining differences in quality of life between the two groups.? The researchers found greater improvements in relation to activity limitation, physical capacity and sexual function among those who were administered intermittent androgen deprivation therapy.
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Source: http://www.prostatecancersurvivorspeak.com/advanced-prostate-cancer-strides-in-treatment/
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