Prostate Cancer
Celebrex-Lipitor combo may halt prostate cancer
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Researchers at Rutgers’ Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy have shown that administering a combination of the widely used drugs Celebrex (celecoxib, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) and Lipitor (atorvastatin, a cholesterol lowering drug) stops the transition of early prostate cancer to its more aggressive and potentially fatal stage.
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States, with more than a quarter-million new cases appearing each year, according to the American Cancer Society. The findings are being presented by Rutgers Professor Xi Zheng at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego, April 14th.
In the early stage of the disease, when it is typically diagnosed, prostate cancer cells depend on androgen hormones, such as testosterone, to grow. Treatment at this stage involves either decreasing the production of the hormone or blocking its actions on the cancer cells.
Exercise may lead to faster prostate tumor growth
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Prostate tumors grew more quickly in mice who exercised than in those who did not, leading to speculation that exercise may increase blood flow to tumors, according to a new study by researchers in the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center (DCCC) and the Duke Prostate Center.
“Our study showed that exercise led to significantly greater tumor growth than a more sedentary lifestyle did, in this mouse model,” said Lee Jones, Ph.D., a researcher in the DCCC and senior investigator on this study. “Our thought is that we may, in the future, be able to use this finding to design better drug delivery models to more effectively treat prostate cancer patients, and those with other types of cancer as well.”
The findings were presented in a poster session at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on April 13 in San Diego, Calif. The study was funded by the United States Department of Defense, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the American Urological Association Foundation, Rising Star in Urology Award, given to Stephen Freedland, one of the study’s investigators.
Potential association of type 2 diabetes genes with prostate cancer
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-Scientists have identified six new genes which play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes, and among the group is the second gene known to also play a role in prostate cancer.
The new findings bring the total number of genes or genomic regions implicated in diabetes to 16, said Laura Scott, assistant research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics. Researchers from the University of Michigan were one of three teams of scientists in Europe and North America that led the multi-group collaboration. The findings, which were published today in the journal Nature Genetics, provide new insights into the mechanisms which are usually responsible for the control of glucose, or sugar, levels in the blood, and to the derangements that can result in type 2 diabetes, which impacts more than 170 million people worldwide.
One of the newly discovered genes, which goes by the name of JAZF1, contains a separate variant that has recently been shown to play a role in prostate cancer, and is the second gene that appears to play a role in both conditions.
Likelihood of Heart Attack Increases for Men After Prostate Cancer Diagnoses
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Emotional stress is associated with CV morbidity and mortality, such as reported during earthquakes, loss of a child and during world cup soccer matches. Emotional triggers result in physiological responses on the vascular, inflammatory and immune systems. These severe physiologic changes can then exacerbate existing comorbidities or initiate new ones.
Several Swedish registries were used for this analysis. A cohort study was designed for men older than 30 years. Four million men were identified. For the first year after CaP diagnosis, fatal CV events among men diagnosed with CaP was 15% higher than those without a CaP diagnosis and non-fatal CV events were 13% higher.
Survey gauges side effects of prostate treatments
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Age, race and obesity affect how satisfied men are with their treatment for prostate cancer, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
And the effects of short-term hormone therapy can linger for years, the survey of 1,201 men treated at nine university hospitals and 625 of their partners found.
The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are designed to give doctors and patients a better idea of what to expect from three types of prostate cancer treatment.
Physical job activity may cut prostate cancer risk
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Working in a job that requires a continuous level of high physical effort may decrease the likelihood of a man developing prostate cancer, researchers report.
Previous research suggested that physical activity decreases the risk of certain cancers. “This study supports this finding for prostate cancer,” Dr. Anusha Krishnadasan, at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Reuters Health.
Krishnadasan and colleagues looked at the link between prostate cancer and physical activity among men working at a southern California facility that tested aerospace engines and nuclear power systems.
PSA Testing Can Predict Advanced Prostate Cancer
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A single prostate specific antigen (PSA) test taken before the age of 50 can be used to predict advanced prostate cancer in men up to 25 years in advance of a diagnosis, according to a new study published by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Lund University in Sweden. The findings, published in the online open- access journal BMC Medicine, should help physicians be able to identify men who would benefit from intensive prostate cancer screenings over their lifetime.
Previously, the team’s research has shown that a single PSA test at age 50 or younger could predict the presence of prostate cancer in men up to 25 years in advance of diagnosis. “This latest study is a unique, natural experiment to test whether we can predict advanced prostate cancer many years before it is diagnosed,” said lead author Hans Lilja, MD, PhD, a clinical chemist with joint appointments in the Departments of Surgery and Medicine at MSKCC.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men after lung cancer. This year, more than 230,000 new cases will be diagnosed, and according to the American Cancer Society, more than 27,000 men died from prostate cancer in 2006.
Older men with prostate cancer can wait and see
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Men in their 70s and older who are diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer can safely “watch and wait” because they are not likely to die of it, researchers confirmed on Wednesday.
Their findings, presented at a meeting of specialists, backs up the widely held belief that prostate cancer rarely kills men if it strikes late in life. Something else will kill them first, said Grace Lu-Yao of the The Cancer Institute of New Jersey.
Her study of more than 9,000 older men with prostate cancer that had not spread beyond the prostate showed that just 3 to 7 percent of the men with low or moderate-grade tumors died of it after 10 years.
Obesity-Related Plasma Hemodilution and PSA Concentration among Men with Prostate Cancer
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The important association that increased circulating plasma volumes in obese men may hemodilute PSA and result in lower levels is reported in the November 21, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Banez and associates. This may result in delayed indications for prostate biopsy and detection of prostate cancer (CaP) in obese men, which could contribute to the explanation that obese men present with more aggressive CaP.
The data analyzed came from the VA SEARCH database along with data from Duke University and Johns Hopkins University. The number of patients from these sites was 1,373, 1,974, and 10,287, respectively. Body mass index (BMI) was categorized as normal (
<25), overweight (25-29.9), mildly obese (30-34.9), and moderately-severely obese (>35). BMI was examined for association with 3 outcomes variables; serum PSA concentration, plasma volume, and PSA mass. The multivariable model adjusted for a variety of clinical and pathological variables. In particular, to study the relationship of BMI and PSA independent of any association between BMI and CaP severity, cancer-specific variables were also adjusted.
Obesity and Mortality in Men with Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer
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An analysis of RTOG 85-31 patients suggests that increased body mass index (BMI) is associated with increased prostate cancer specific mortality (PCSM). The report appears in the online version of Cancer and is authored by Dr. Efstathiou and collaborators.
Greater BMI is associated with more aggressive higher-grade prostate cancer (CaP) and increase biochemical recurrence rates after radical prostatectomy. There is less data published regarding radiotherapy (XRT). This study sought to analyze the relationship between BMI and PCSM in a large cohort of patients treated with XRT on the RTOG 85-31 trial. RTOG 85-31 was a phase III trial comparing the XRT with indefinite androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) begun during the last week of XRT, to XRT alone with ADT initiated at the time of disease recurrence. Participants had evidence of locally advanced disease, clinical stage T3, or evidence of regional lymph node metastasis. Stage T4 tumors were not included and patients needed a Karnofsky performance status >60%. Total XRT dose was 65-70Gy. PCSM was defined as death from CaP or protocol treatment. All cause mortality (ACM) was death from any cause. Univariate and multivariate analysis was performed, the latter including age, race, centrally reviewed Gleason score, clinical stage, nodal metastasis, prior prostatectomy, treatment arm, and BMI.
No Treatment for Prostate Cancer Proven Superior
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Patients who undergo complete prostate removal are less likely to experience urinary incontinence or other complications if the operation is done by an experienced surgeon in a hospital that does many of the procedures, according to a report funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
However, the new report concludes that scientific evidence has not established surgery or any other single treatment as superior for all men. The analysis compared the effectiveness and risks of eight prostate cancer treatments, ranging from prostate removal to radioactive implants to no treatment. An article based on the report is posted today in the online version of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“This report is a reminder that patient outcomes may vary according to treatment settings,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. “But this analysis also underscores a broader message: when it comes to prostate cancer, we have much to learn about which treatments work best, and patients should be informed about the benefits and harms of treatment options.”
Testosterone seen unrelated to prostate cancer risk
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Natural levels of a man’s testosterone do not affect his prostate cancer risk as some had thought, a finding that should spur scientists to rethink their approach to the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.
Nearly two dozen studies have examined a potential link between testosterone and prostate cancer risk but so far results have been inconclusive, said Andrew Roddam, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford who led the study.
In the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Roddam and colleagues said they found no such relationship after collecting worldwide data on hormone levels of 3,886 men who eventually developed prostate cancer and 6,438 men who did not.
Combination Therapy Improves Survival For Certain Prostate Cancer Patients
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Men with localized prostate cancer who were treated with male hormone suppression therapy and radiation treatment had longer survival, but those with moderate to high levels of other illnesses did not experience this effect, according to a study in the January 23 issue of JAMA.
Several studies have documented increased survival when androgen (male sex hormone) suppression therapy (AST) is combined with external beam radiation therapy (RT) compared with RT alone in the treatment of unfavorable localized and locally advanced prostate cancer. However, comorbid (co-existing) illnesses may increase the negative effects of specific anti-cancer treatments such as AST, altering the survival benefit observed when AST is added to RT.
Anthony V. D’Amico, M.D., Ph.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues performed an analysis of overall survival of 206 men with localized but unfavorable–risk prostate cancer in subgroups defined by their level of comorbidity at the time of their randomization to AST and RT vs. RT alone. During a median follow-up of 7.6 years, 74 deaths occurred.
Higher prostate cancer risk tied to severe acne
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New research suggests a link between acne and prostate cancer, but the study’s authors urge caution in interpreting their findings.
Men who had taken tetracycline, an antibiotic used to treat severe acne, for 4 years or longer were 70 percent more likely than men who hadn’t used the drug, or had used it for a shorter time, to develop prostate cancer over a 10-year period, Dr. Siobhan Sutcliffe of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and colleagues found.
“Although intriguing, these findings should be interpreted cautiously,” Sutcliffe and her team say, pointing to the small number of people who had used tetracycline for at least 4 years (just 0.5 percent of the 34,629 men in the study), the indirect assessment of severe acne, and the fact that acne can have multiple, complex causes.
Just hours apart, 2 brothers undergo robotic prostate cancer surgery
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“We are blessed to have each other to depend on. If you have to go through something bad like cancer, you’re glad to have a friend to go through it with,” said one of two brothers from Savannah, Georgia recovering from robotic prostate cancer surgery. The two siblings flew to The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York to have lifesaving surgery on the same day this week. Dr. David B. Samadi, M.D., Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery in the Department of Urology at Mount Sinai successfully performed the robotic prostate cancer surgeries on the siblings one after another on Monday, January 14th, 2008.
“The brothers have benefited physically and even emotionally as a result of having their prostatectomy with the da Vinci robotic technology at Mount Sinai together,” said Dr. Samadi. “Each minimally invasive surgery was an hour and twenty minutes which included only a few tiny incisions, limited blood loss (50 CC), no need for blood transfusions, less pain, and a faster recovery which included each of the patients walking the next day and were released from the hospital two days after surgery.”
