HealthDay News — For men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer, long-term hormonal therapy offers no benefit over short-term hormonal therapy, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation Oncology, held from Sept. 22 to 25 in Atlanta.
Amin Mirhadi, M.D., from the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and colleagues compared the effect of long-term versus short-term hormonal therapy using data from 133 patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer enrolled in the RTOG 9202 trial. Seventy-four patients were treated with initial androgen deprivation only (STAD) and 59 received long-term adjuvant androgen deprivation (LTAD).
The researchers found that with a median follow-up of more than 11 years, 39 patients in the STAD group and 33 in the LTAD group were alive. Overall survival (OS) was not significantly different between the groups (10-year estimates, 61 percent in STAD versus 65 percent in LTAD; P = 0.53). Ten-year disease-specific survival (DSS) was not significantly different between the groups (96 percent in each group; P = 0.72), nor were prostate specific antigen failure rates (53 and 55 percent, respectively; P = 0.99).
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“Most clinicians have felt that ‘more was better’ when it came to blocking testosterone in prostate cancer patients; however, results for the specific end points we focused on, OS and DSS, indicate that this was clearly not the case,” Mirhadi said in a statement.
One author disclosed a financial relationship with Astellas.
