Prostate Cancer: December 2006 Archives

Canadian and international researchers are recruiting men for a clinical trial to test whether combining a high-dose vitamin D pill with chemotherapy improves treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

Dr. Kim Chi of the B.C. Cancer Agency and two other lead investigators will study about 1,000 men over the next two years.

Currently, there is little to offer prostate cancer patients who have stopped responding to standard hormone therapy, Chi said.

BALTIMORE, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Men with early prostate cancer who eat a vegetarian diet, exercise and reduce stress may lower their risk of cancer progression, says a U.S. study.

The 93 study participants were men with early-stage prostate cancer who had chosen "watchful waiting" instead of active treatment for their prostate cancer.

During the one-year study, six men in the usual care group underwent conventional treatment because of rising prostate specific antigen, known as PSA, or evidence of progression from magnetic resonance imaging. In contrast, none of the men in the comprehensive lifestyle group, who followed a very-low-fat diet of 10 percent or less of daily calories, needed treatment. PSA levels decreased 4 percent in the lifestyle group, whereas PSA levels increased 6 percent in the usual-care group.

A study has found that men with advanced, often untreatable prostate cancer who received a therapeutic cancer vaccine went on to survive longer than those receiving a placebo.
Study findings showed the vaccine group lived up to an average of four-and-a-half months longer and had a greater than three-fold increase in survival at 36 months when compared to patients in the placebo group.

The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III clinical trial was conducted to test the efficacy of the vaccine, called sipuleucel-T, in delaying disease progression and prolonging survival in patients with asymptomatic metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC).

BRUSSELS (MarketWatch) -- OncoMethylome Sciences (ONCOB.BT) Wednesday announced it successfully completed the initial research activities of its urine-based prostate cancer test, and that the test has been licensed to Veridex LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company (JNJ).

The test, which uses urine as the patient sample, is being developed to improve the current process for prostate cancer screening. For men, prostate cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Tests that screen for prostate cancer today, such as the PSA test, are commonly criticized by the medical community for their inaccuracy.

Up to 75% of the men who are recommended for a prostate biopsy procedure based on their elevated PSA levels have negative biopsy results.

Many elderly men are getting screened for prostate cancer unnecessarily, according to researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

In a study of nearly 600,000 men aged 70 and older who had been seen at dozens of VA hospitals across the United States, the research team found high rates of inappropriate PSA testing, even among men with multiple illnesses who were unlikely to survive more than 10 years.

The older a man is, the more likely he is to develop prostate cancer. At the same time, however, the older the man, the more likely he is to die of something else before the prostate cancer can even begin to cause symptoms.

ISLAMABAD - Green and black tea can slow down the spread of prostate cancer, while a highly touted antioxidant found in red wine, grapes and peanuts does not perform well as a cancer preventive, two new studies have found.

For the tea study, Susanne Henning, an associate researcher at the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, assigned 20 men, all scheduled for prostate removal due to cancer, to drink either black tea, green tea or soda, five

The aim was to see if substances called polyphenols found in tea might slow prostate cancer cell growth. Other researchers have found these polyphenols induce death in cancer cells.

A comprehensive study into treatments for prostate cancer has found that palladium-based therapies provide more effective than iodine alternatives.

According to the research, carried out by experts from a number of US institutions including the New York Prostate Institute, patients treated with palladium therapies were less likely to suffer a recurrence of prostate cancer than those who were treated with iodine.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncologists (Astro), Dr Louis Potters, of the New York Prostate Institute, revealed: "Based on the experience of the multi-institutional team of physicians who tested the patients and generated the data presented, there was a more positive outcome for patients that were treated with palladium over iodine."

LONDON (Reuters) - A popular baldness drug taken by more than 4 million men worldwide can mask an important marker used in screening tests to detect prostate cancer, scientists said on Monday.

Finasteride, which is made by Merck & Co Inc under the name Propecia, is a leading drug to treat male-pattern baldness.

But researchers have discovered it artificially lowers a protein called prostate specific antigen (PSA). High levels of PSA in the blood can signal prostate cancer or other problems.

Dr Anthony D'Amico, the lead author of the study from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, recommends middle-aged men taking Propecia should have their PSA levels multiplied by 2 in tests to account for the difference.

The nearly 240,000 men in the United States who will learn they have prostate cancer this year have one more thing to worry about: Are their doctors making treatment decisions on the basis of money as much as medicine?

Among several widely used treatments for prostate cancer, one stands out for its profit potential. The approach, a radiation therapy known as I.M.R.T., can mean reimbursement of $47,000 or more a patient.

That is many times the fees that urologists make on other accepted treatments for the disease, which include surgery and radioactive seed implants. And it may help explain why urologists have started buying multimillion-dollar I.M.R.T. equipment and software, and why many more are investigating it as a way to increase their incomes.