Prostate hormones may up death rate

BOSTON, July 26 (UPI) -- Adding hormone therapy to treat prostate cancer may reduce overall survival in men with pre-existing heart conditions, U.S. researchers say.

Lead author Dr. Paul L. Nguyen, a radiation oncologist at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center in Boston says the study involved from 1991 to 2006, 14,594 men with prostate cancer treated with brachytherapy-based radiation therapy. Of these, 9.4 percent, had a history of congestive heart failure or myocardial infarction, and among those with heart conditions, 22.6 percent received supplemental external beam radiation therapy and 42.9 percent received four months of androgen deprivation therapy to reduce testosterone in their bodies, which can help the cancer grow.

For the entire group of men with a history of heart problems, adding hormone therapy led to a significant increase in overall mortality.

For men with pre-existing heart conditions and high-risk prostate cancer, the study found that by five years, 31.8 percent of the men who received hormones had died compared to 19.5 percent of the men who did not receive hormone therapy.

"We found that for men with localized prostate cancer and a history of heart problems, treatment with hormones plus radiation was associated with a higher all-cause mortality than treatment with radiation alone, even for patients with high-risk malignant disease," Nguyen says in a statement. "Despite Phase III data supporting hormone therapy use for men with high-risk disease, the subgroup of men with a history of heart disease may be harmed by hormone therapy -- but further research is necessary."

The findings are published online in advance of the print edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology-Biology-Physics.