A New Prostate Cancers Treatment Strategy

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

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

So "It needs to be stressed that bipolar androgen psychoanalysis is not ready for adoption into routine clinical practice, since these studies have not been completed. The story 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 explicit antigen and 50 percent had shrinkage of their cancer". PSA levels are a touchstone exceptional of prostate cancer activity, as sober in a blood test. Senior inspect creator Dr Samuel Denmeade is co-director of the prostate cancer program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He believes the rejuvenated approach has benefits beyond its sense on cancer cells.

That's because restoring a man's testosterone levels also reduced the side slang shit 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 congenial they had more energy. Men on hormone healing who couldn't have sex could have sex again, so they were very happy about that". And although testosterone levels alternated between weighty 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 existent longer, but we don't know that yet. According to Denmeade, men enrolled in the ponder didn't have any symptoms from their cancer, such as pain, and had been on standard hormonal group therapy for an average of four years. They had also suffered a side effect of standard hormonal treatment - 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 aide uncover any risks associated with the treatment. And one connoisseur 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 primordial death," said Dr Anthony D'Amico, chief of radiation oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston site. D'Amico agreed with the mug up authors that bipolar androgen cure is not ready to be used in clinical practice and doctors should wait for the results of ongoing trials before oblation it to men.