Doctors have develop a successful new treatment for prostate gland cancer that slow up down the condition and help patients avoid relapse and subsist longer . The fantastic new result was possible by adding a drug called abiraterone acetate ( zytiga ) to a standard hormone therapy .
The result is based on a clinical test of almost 2,000 hoi polloi . It point that adding abiraterone let down the relative risk of destruction by 37 pct and the 3 - year survival rate to 83 percentage from 76 percent based on the stock therapy alone .
The report was introduce at the2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual meetingby lead author Professor Nicholas James from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham , UK .
“ Abiraterone not only extended life , but also lowered the chance of backsliding by 70 % and foreshorten the chance of serious os complications by 50 % , ” Professor James said in astatement . “ We believe that the upfront care for patient newly name with sophisticated prostate cancer should change . ”
The combined therapies fight the yield of testosterone around the body . Testosterone stimulates the growing of prostate genus Cancer cell so the standard treatment , cognise as androgen deprivation therapy ( ADT ) , act on the testicles and stops the production of hormones . Unfortunately , other organs , including the prostate glands , continue to create small-scale quantities of testosterone and this is where abiraterone comes in . The heart direct the enzyme that produces testosterone and similar hormones everywhere .
The patient were survey up on fair 40 month after the two types of treatment started . According to the study , over that time 262 deaths occurred in the grouping using standard therapy and 184 in the group using abiraterone . Of these deaths , two in the abiraterone group and one in the standard were due to the intervention .
While the therapy is predict in condition of survival rate , abiraterone had more severe side effects than the standard approach . Forty - one percent of affected role complained of severe side effects when take abiraterone , equate to 29 percent from the standard group . Side burden include cardiovascular and liver job .
Previous studies showed successful result in fighting a particularly aggressive form of prostate cancers by using a mixture of hormonal therapy and a chemotherapy drug do it as docetaxel . There is a chance that some patient might benefit by let in abiraterone into the mix but more studies are necessary to confirm that . The squad is presently planning molecular analysis of tissue samples from patient that could benefit from the new cocktail but , for now , it ’s too early to severalise .
