http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/PCPT0608
Initial results from that trial, the nearly 19,000-participant Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT), were published in 2003 and showed that men who took 5 mg of finasteride daily for seven years had a 25 percent reduced risk of developing prostate cancer compared with men taking a placebo.
However, finasteride treatment was also associated with a small but statistically significant increased risk for developing high-grade prostate cancers, those with Gleason scores of 7 to 10. And because the preventive benefit was the result of a reduction of non-high grade cancers, those with a Gleason score of 6 or less, some prostate cancer researchers argued that finasteride only prevents indolent cancers that would never require treatment, explains Dr. Ian Thompson, chair of the Department of Urology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and a senior author on two of the new analyses.
Neither conclusion, he says, now appears to be accurate
"We've now shown that the cancers prevented by finasteride are often clinically significant, the same kind of cancers that lead to surgery," Dr. Thompson says. "In addition, we showed a 28 percent reduction of high-grade cancer with finasteride."
In a related editorial in Cancer Prevention Research, Drs. Christopher Logothetis and Paul Schellhammer, from University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Eastern Virginia Medical School, respectively, lauded the analyses, arguing that the results demonstrate that "the promise of prostate cancer prevention is a reality."
Read full article at the link above.
Initial results from that trial, the nearly 19,000-participant Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT), were published in 2003 and showed that men who took 5 mg of finasteride daily for seven years had a 25 percent reduced risk of developing prostate cancer compared with men taking a placebo.
However, finasteride treatment was also associated with a small but statistically significant increased risk for developing high-grade prostate cancers, those with Gleason scores of 7 to 10. And because the preventive benefit was the result of a reduction of non-high grade cancers, those with a Gleason score of 6 or less, some prostate cancer researchers argued that finasteride only prevents indolent cancers that would never require treatment, explains Dr. Ian Thompson, chair of the Department of Urology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and a senior author on two of the new analyses.
Neither conclusion, he says, now appears to be accurate
"We've now shown that the cancers prevented by finasteride are often clinically significant, the same kind of cancers that lead to surgery," Dr. Thompson says. "In addition, we showed a 28 percent reduction of high-grade cancer with finasteride."
In a related editorial in Cancer Prevention Research, Drs. Christopher Logothetis and Paul Schellhammer, from University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Eastern Virginia Medical School, respectively, lauded the analyses, arguing that the results demonstrate that "the promise of prostate cancer prevention is a reality."
Read full article at the link above.
