Just a few weeks ago we reported data from a study in California suggesting an association between treatment with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for prostate cancer and subsequent risk for diagnosis with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Almost inevitably, it would seem, there now comes a newer paper suggesting no such association at all.
Khosrow-Khavar et al., in an article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, have provided data from an analysis of the outcomes of > 30,000 men, all newly diagnosed with non-metastatic prostate cancer in the UK between April 1, 1988, and April 30, 2015, and followed until April 30, 2016. For all these men (identified through the UK’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink), the author’s were able to search for a subsequent diagnosis of dementia, and also whether the patients had or had not been treated with ADT (as well as the type of ADT used) as a part of their prostate cancer care.
Khosrow-Khavar et al. report the following:
- The average (mean) patient follow-up was 4.3 ± 3.6 years.
- During that follow-up period
- 799 /30,903 men with prostate cancer (2.6 percent) were diagnosed with dementia.
- The age-adjusted incidence of dementia among these prostate cancer patients was 6.0 cases per 1,000 person-years.
- Comparing the risk for dementia among ADT users as compared to non-ADT users,
- The age-adjusted incidence of dementia among non-users of ADT was 4.4 cases per 1,000 person-years.
- The age-adjusted incidence of dementia among users of ADT was 7.4 cases per 1,000 person-years
- The adjusted hazard ratio for risk of dementia among the users was 1.02.
- This difference in age-adh=justed risk was not statistically significant.
- Neither cumulative duration of use of ADT nor the use of any one specific type of ADT was associated with increased risk for dementia.
The authors conclude that, in their study, “the use of ADT was not associated with an increased risk of dementia.” However, they also note that, “Additional studies in different settings are needed to confirm these findings.”
Could it be that it is treatment for prostate cancer at an eminent medical center in California that causes an increased risk for dementia? Or perhaps it’s that Englishmen in general (your sitemaster included, since that was his nationality of origin) are too dumb to start with for anyone to ever accuse them of having become demented (whether they were treated with ADT or not)!
Something tells your sitemaster that we haven’t heard the end of this story!
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Treatment | Tagged: ADT, androgen, dementia, deprivation, risk, therapy |
THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK 
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