(HealthDay News) — For most men with clinically localized prostate cancer who have not received treatment with curative intent, primary androgen-deprivation therapy (PADT) does not reduce risk of mortality, according to research published online March 17 in in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Arnold L. Potosky, PhD, of the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study involving 15,170 men with prostate cancer who did not receive curative intent therapy. The researchers sought to assess the effect of PADT on clinically localized disease.
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“Primary androgen-deprivation therapy (PADT) is often used to treat clinically localized prostate cancer, but its effects on cause-specific and overall mortality have not been established. Given the widespread use of PADT and the potential risks of serious adverse effects, accurate mortality data are needed to inform treatment decisions,” they wrote.
Potosky and colleagues found, after multivariable adjustment, that PADT was not significantly associated with risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 1.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97-1.11) or prostate-cancer-specific mortality (HR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.89-1.19).
Subgroup analysis showed that PADT was significantly associated with decreased risk of all-cause mortality in men with clinically localized prostate cancer with high risk of progression.
“In summary, we found that most men diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer who do not receive curative-intent therapy receive no apparent mortality benefit from PADT compared with receiving no therapy,” the researchers wrote. “We did, however, find a small and statistically significant overall mortality benefit associated with PADT use in the subgroup of men with high-risk prostate cancer.”
