THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

Today’s news reports include items on:

• Exercise and prostate cancer risk (in mice)
• Quality of life over 4 years after first-line therapy
• The adverse effects of long-term hormone therapy

Several epidemiological studies have reported an inverse association between physical activity and the risk of prostate cancer. Esser et al. have now reported data from a study of exercise vs. n0-exercise in a type of mouse that is predisposed to prostate cancer. They showed that 43 percent of dorsalateral prostates from mice that ran < 5 km/day were classified as having with advanced pathology as compared to none (0 percent) in mice that ran > 5.0 km/day. Whether these data “translate” over to humans is a whole other question, but we will probably find out in the next 40 years as a generation of male children who have had limited physical exercise growing up reach an age where prostate cancer becomes a real risk.

Gore et al. have reported health-related quality of life data over a 4-year follow-up period after first-line therapy for localized prostate cancer in a group of 475 patients. Their data appear to confirm the well-known patterns of risk for adverse events associated with surgery, external beam radiation, and brachytherapy when used as first-line treatments.

Alibhai et al. studied data from 19,000+ prostate cancer patients listed in health system administrative databases in Ontario, Canada, who were treated with continuous androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for at least 6 months or who underwent bilateral orchiectomy. The cohort was observed for a mean of 6.47 years. They have shown that continuous use of ADT was associated with an small increase in risk of diabetes (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.16), a large increase in risk for “fragility fracture” (HR = 1.65), but no increease in risk for acute myocardial infarction (HR = 0.91) or sudden cardiac death (HR = 0.96). Longer duration of ADT was associated with an excess risk of fragility fractures and diabetes but not cardiac outcomes.

Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Prevention, Treatment, Uncategorized Tagged: | exercise, hormone therapy, Prevention, quality of life, risk