Prostate Cancer drug trials continue to ignore easy prevention strategy: Vitamin D and natural sunlight
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- Preventing prostate cancer and helping men with the disease avoid osteoporosis is the focus of two new clinical trials at the Medical College of Georgia.
- MCG is participating in a national study to determine whether men can reduce their prostate cancer risk by taking a drug that halts the conversion of the male hormone to a super-duper hormone that appears to stimulate prostate cancer growth.
- The lifetime risk of prostate cancer is about 1 in 6 for American men, except for blacks as well as men with a family history who are at increased risk, according to the National Prostate Cancer Coalition; the risk increases to about 50 percent by age 80.
- MCG also is a study site for a national study looking at whether a new drug that slows bone resorption can help prostate cancer patients avoid osteoporosis.
- The cancer prevention study examines the potential of dutasteride, the active ingredient in a drug marketed to treat prostate enlargement, a common problem of aging .
- For some unknown reason, circulating male hormone, testosterone, is converted into this more potent male hormone in the prostate gland and scalp.
- For the prevention study, MCG is evaluating patients age 50-75 with elevated PSAs, a marker for prostate cancer, who have had a negative biopsy in the last six months.
- Loss of the female hormone, estrogen , helps disrupt the normal balance between cells called osteoblasts that make bone and osteoclasts that consume it.
- The alternative is therapy that suppresses hormone production, essentially chemical castration to prevent signaling the testes to make hormone.
- The study looks as a new bisphosphonate that slows bone resorption and may help correct the bone deficit that occurs with anti-hormone therapy, Dr. Brown says.
- For the study, MCG is looking for men with prostate cancer who are taking anti-hormone therapy for their disease.
Source: www.mcg.edu