Prostate Cancer

CHICAGO -- Preliminary results from a University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center study found that just 15 percent of a group of men in North Carolina with early-stage prostate cancer who choose active surveillance instead of treatment followed the recommended monitoring guidelines. The findings, presented Sunday, June 2, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting 2019 in Chicago, were drawn from an analysis of 346 men newly diagnosed between 2011 and 2013 with low or intermediate-risk prostate cancer in North Carolina. Researchers analyzed how often men received biopsies and other tests according to the guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. "Active surveillance has rigorous guidelines -- people need regular PSA tests, they need prostate exams, they need prostate biopsies so you can watch the cancer very closely, and you don't lose the opportunity to treat the cancer when it starts to grow," said UNC Linebe...

Larry Andersen picked up the phone that November morning and within seconds he darted a glance across the bedroom at his wife, Kristi. The look said it. It was a frightened, on-the-verge-of-tears mien. He didn’t have to say a word. He just shook his head. Kristi knew. She ran right to him and they both sobbed. That’s when the beloved Phillies’ radio color commentator found out he had prostate cancer. “I heard that and my heart sank,” Andersen recalled. “I looked at Kristi and I saw all of her hope instantly gone. My doctor told me to go see him right now. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office, and when the doctor says he’s upset, and that he wished he would have caught this six months ago … that made me think.” “LA” is someone who doesn’t scare easily. When you spend 18 years in the majors as a relief pitcher staring down some of the most intimidating hitters in the game, you can never show fear. On Wednesday, December 5, 2018, Andersen underwent surgery to address his prostate...

Christian Carrie CHICAGO — The addition of short-term androgen deprivation therapy to salvage radiotherapy significantly improved 10-year metastasis-free survival among patients with biological relapse after radical prostatectomy, according to data presented at ASCO Annual Meeting. “Clearly, ADT improves metastasis-free survival,” Christian Carrie, MD, of the department of radiation oncology at Centre Léon Bérard in Lyon, France, told HemOnc Today . “When I wrote this trial, I thought that ADT would not be useful for low-risk patients but, in fact, these patients have experienced benefit.” The current analysis provides additional follow-up to the GETUG-AFU 16 phase 3 randomized trial comparing the efficacy of radiotherapy alone vs. radiotherapy plus short-term ADT among patients with biological relapse after radical prostatectomy . For the trial, researchers randomly assigned 743 patients (median age, 67 years) to either radiotherapy alone (n = 374) or with ADT (n = 369). Patie...

CHICAGO -- Preliminary results from a University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center study found that just 15 percent of a group of men in North Carolina with early-stage prostate cancer who choose active surveillance instead of treatment followed the recommended monitoring guidelines. The findings, presented Sunday, June 2, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting 2019 in Chicago, were drawn from an analysis of 346 men newly diagnosed between 2011 and 2013 with low or intermediate-risk prostate cancer in North Carolina. Researchers analyzed how often men received biopsies and other tests according to the guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. "Active surveillance has rigorous guidelines -- people need regular PSA tests, they need prostate exams, they need prostate biopsies so you can watch the cancer very closely, and you don't lose the opportunity to treat the cancer when it starts to grow," said UNC Linebe...

Larry Andersen picked up the phone that November morning and within seconds he darted a glance across the bedroom at his wife, Kristi. The look said it. It was a frightened, on-the-verge-of-tears mien. He didn’t have to say a word. He just shook his head. Kristi knew. She ran right to him and they both sobbed. That’s when the beloved Phillies’ radio color commentator found out he had prostate cancer. “I heard that and my heart sank,” Andersen recalled. “I looked at Kristi and I saw all of her hope instantly gone. My doctor told me to go see him right now. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office, and when the doctor says he’s upset, and that he wished he would have caught this six months ago … that made me think.” “LA” is someone who doesn’t scare easily. When you spend 18 years in the majors as a relief pitcher staring down some of the most intimidating hitters in the game, you can never show fear. On Wednesday, December 5, 2018, Andersen underwent surgery to address his prostate...

(Reuters Health) - Black men are more likely to die of prostate cancer than white men in the U.S., but a new study suggests this racial disparity may be largely due to differences in the medical care men receive. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, more apt to have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis, and more than twice as likely to die of the disease than white men in the U.S., researchers note in JAMA Oncology. African American men are also more prone to chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes that diminish their prostate cancer survival odds, and more likely to face financial barriers to care, the authors write. To better understand what’s behind the disparities in mortality, researchers compared outcomes for three groups with the same type of prostate cancer. Most of the men were part of a national registry of 296,273 cancer patients who didn’t receive uniform treatment or access to care. Two smaller groups of men did have the same ac...

According to the American cancer society, one in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during his lifetime. The standard of care is usually surgery, radiation, or/and chemotherapy. But one researcher believes there should be a new treatment strategy that can improve a patient's quality of life. It may not seem like much, but to Mickey Nunn, being able to play bass guitar for his wife Teresa is a big miracle. More than 10 years ago, he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. The cancer was inoperable, and Nunn had already undergone 42 treatments of radiation. So now he had 17 rounds of chemotherapy. Nunn said, "Chemo for me was like throwing it on the wall and seeing if it stuck." Even with all the treatments, his PSA score, or prostate-specific antigen sky-rocketed. A score above four is a risk factor for prostate cancer. Nunn's was 99. Precision Oncology Delivers Miracle "Only thing that was left was to pray to God for a mir...

There are known associations between treatment of prostate cancer (PCa) involving Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) and psychological and physical side effects. We investigate the associations between cancer-related symptoms, health-related quality of life (HRQL), and poor psychological outcomes in men whose treatment for PCa involved ADT. A cross-sectional postal questionnaire was administered to UK men 18-42 months post diagnosis of PCa. Men completed items on functional outcomes using the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (EPIC-26), EuroQol-5D (EQ-5D), and the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Fatigue subscale. Psychological outcomes (mental well-being and psychological distress) were assessed using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS) and the Kessler 6-item scale (K6), respectively. Associations between explanatory variables and psychological outcomes were assessed using stepped logistic regression. 13,097 men ...

Prostate cancer affects 1 in 9 men and is one of the most common cancers in the United States. Due to the close anatomical association between the prostate and nearby organs, well-known complications of prostate cancer treatment are urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Santa Monica-based Avenda Health hopes to use artificial intelligence to decrease rates of those complications and improve treatment outcomes. Avenda Health was founded in June 2017 as the culmination of nearly a decade of research at University of California, Los Angeles. The core team consists of three co-founders: Chief Executive Officer Shyam Natarajan, Chief Operating Officer Brittany Berry-Pusey, Ph.D., and Chief Medical Officer Leonard S. Marks, M.D. Together, the three have experience in prostate cancer care, prostate imaging and biopsy, artificial intelligence, and medical devices. Unlike traditional prostate cancer treatment, which involves removing or irradiating the entire prostate gland, Aven...

Vasectomy, a widespread form of birth control, is associated with a small but significantly increased risk of prostate cancer over the long run, according to a comprehensive analysis of Danish nationwide registries. "The precise etiology of prostate cancer is unknown, but cohort studies suggest that reproductive factors influence disease development," comment the authors, led by Anders Husby, MD, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark. "We showed that vasectomy is associated with a long-term increased risk of prostate cancer, which manifests itself from ten years after the procedure," investigators add. "[However], the absolute increased risk of prostate cancer following vasectomy is...small and similar to the increased breast cancer risk in women following oral contraceptive use," they state. The study was published online May 23 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) . In an accompanying editorial , lead editorialist Lorele...

(Reuters Health) - Black men are more likely to die of prostate cancer than white men in the U.S., but a new study suggests this racial disparity may be largely due to differences in the medical care men receive. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, more apt to have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis, and more than twice as likely to die of the disease than white men in the U.S., researchers note in JAMA Oncology. African American men are also more prone to chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes that diminish their prostate cancer survival odds, and more likely to face financial barriers to care, the authors write. To better understand what’s behind the disparities in mortality, researchers compared outcomes for three groups with the same type of prostate cancer. Most of the men were part of a national registry of 296,273 cancer patients who didn’t receive uniform treatment or access to care. Two smaller groups of men did have the same ac...

Vasectomy, a widespread form of birth control, is associated with a small but significantly increased risk of prostate cancer over the long run, according to a comprehensive analysis of Danish nationwide registries. "The precise etiology of prostate cancer is unknown, but cohort studies suggest that reproductive factors influence disease development," comment the authors, led by Anders Husby, MD, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark. "We showed that vasectomy is associated with a long-term increased risk of prostate cancer, which manifests itself from ten years after the procedure," investigators add. "[However], the absolute increased risk of prostate cancer following vasectomy is...small and similar to the increased breast cancer risk in women following oral contraceptive use," they state. The study was published online May 23 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) . In an accompanying editorial , lead editorialist Lorele...

According to the American cancer society, one in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during his lifetime. The standard of care is usually surgery, radiation, or/and chemotherapy. But one researcher believes there should be a new treatment strategy that can improve a patient's quality of life. It may not seem like much, but to Mickey Nunn, being able to play bass guitar for his wife Teresa is a big miracle. More than 10 years ago, he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. The cancer was inoperable, and Nunn had already undergone 42 treatments of radiation. So now he had 17 rounds of chemotherapy. Nunn said, "Chemo for me was like throwing it on the wall and seeing if it stuck." Even with all the treatments, his PSA score, or prostate-specific antigen sky-rocketed. A score above four is a risk factor for prostate cancer. Nunn's was 99. Precision Oncology Delivers Miracle "Only thing that was left was to pray to God for a mir...

(Reuters Health) - Black men are more likely to die of prostate cancer than white men in the U.S., but a new study suggests this racial disparity may be largely due to differences in the medical care men receive. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, more apt to have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis, and more than twice as likely to die of the disease than white men in the U.S., researchers note in JAMA Oncology. African American men are also more prone to chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes that diminish their prostate cancer survival odds, and more likely to face financial barriers to care, the authors write. To better understand what’s behind the disparities in mortality, researchers compared outcomes for three groups with the same type of prostate cancer. Most of the men were part of a national registry of 296,273 cancer patients who didn’t receive uniform treatment or access to care. Two smaller groups of men did have the same ac...

(Reuters Health) - Black men are more likely to die of prostate cancer than white men in the U.S., but a new study suggests this racial disparity may be largely due to differences in the medical care men receive. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, more apt to have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis, and more than twice as likely to die of the disease than white men in the U.S., researchers note in JAMA Oncology. African American men are also more prone to chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes that diminish their prostate cancer survival odds, and more likely to face financial barriers to care, the authors write. To better understand what’s behind the disparities in mortality, researchers compared outcomes for three groups with the same type of prostate cancer. Most of the men were part of a national registry of 296,273 cancer patients who didn’t receive uniform treatment or access to care. Two smaller groups of men did have the same ac...

The present study aimed to compare the long-term clinical and functional outcomes of patients with clinically localized prostate cancer treated with radical prostatectomy compared to the watchful waiting. PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and reference lists of relevant marker studies were scrutinized from inception to Jan 2018. Two reviewers conducted data abstraction and quality assessment of included trials independently. Quality of included studies were assessed by using Cochrane checklist. Inverse-variance and Mantel-Haenszel estimates under random effects model were used to pool results as relative risks with 95% confidence interval. Heterogeneity was assessed by using I2. Three randomized controlled trials with 1568 participants were included. Compared to watchful waiting, radical prostatectomy had no significant effect on all-cause mortality at 12-year follow-up. However, radical prostatectomy had significant effect on reducing prostate-cause mortality at...

The present study aimed to compare the long-term clinical and functional outcomes of patients with clinically localized prostate cancer treated with radical prostatectomy compared to the watchful waiting. PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and reference lists of relevant marker studies were scrutinized from inception to Jan 2018. Two reviewers conducted data abstraction and quality assessment of included trials independently. Quality of included studies were assessed by using Cochrane checklist. Inverse-variance and Mantel-Haenszel estimates under random effects model were used to pool results as relative risks with 95% confidence interval. Heterogeneity was assessed by using I2. Three randomized controlled trials with 1568 participants were included. Compared to watchful waiting, radical prostatectomy had no significant effect on all-cause mortality at 12-year follow-up. However, radical prostatectomy had significant effect on reducing prostate-cause mortality at...

To investigate the prognostic and therapeutic implications of time to biochemical relapse (BCR) in patients with prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy. The records of 3210 consecutive men with prostate cancer who underwent radical prostatectomy between January 1998 and June 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. Patients with BCR were divided into three groups based on quartiles of time to BCR, namely an early group (first quartile), an intermediate group (second and third quartiles) and late group (fourth quartile). 817 (25.5%) patients experienced BCR at a median of 24.9 months after surgery. The 8-year rate of distant metastasis-free survival (64.3% vs. 41.3%, p = 0.002) and cancer-specific survival (86.6% vs. 63.4%, p < 0.001) was higher in the salvage radiotherapy (SRT) group than the androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) group in patients with early BCR, whereas those rates (91.3% vs. 87.9%, p = 0.607 and 100.0% vs. 93.1%, p = 0.144, respectively) were similar in patient...

Prostate cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease. Despite being clinically similar, some tumours are more likely to recur after surgery compared to others. Distinguishing those that need adjuvant or salvage radiotherapy will improve patient outcomes. The goal of this study was to identify circulating microRNA that could independently predict prostate cancer patient risk stratification after radical prostatectomy. Seventy-eight prostate cancer patients were recruited at the Odette Cancer Centre in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. All patients had previously undergone radical prostatectomy. Blood samples were collected simultaneously for PSA testing and miRNA analysis using NanoString nCounter technology. Of the 78 samples, 75 had acceptable miRNA quantity and quality. Patients were stratified into high- and low-risk categories based on Gleason score, pathological T stage, surgical margin status, and diagnostic PSA: patients with Gleason ≥ 8; pT3a and positive margin; pT3b and an...