Treatment extends life for some with cancer

Abiraterone reduces risk of dying

CHICAGO, June 5: Adding a new anti-hormonal drug to the standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer has been shown to reduce the risk of dying by almost 40 percent, according to two studies published recently.

The drug, abiraterone, is sold by Janssen Pharmaceuticals under the brand name Zytiga.

According to one study, when combined with prednisone, which is typically given to men with metastatic prostate cancer, abiraterone reduced the risk of dying by 38 percent.

It also doubled the amount of time before the cancer worsened — from 14.8 to 33 months — said the findings released at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting.

The clinical trial included 1,200 patients in 34 countries and ran from February 2013 to December 2014.

Most prostate cancers — 92 percent of cases, according to the National Library of Medicine — are discovered early, before the tumors have spread elsewhere in the body.

But for the five percent or so of men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer that has already spread, the outlook can be dire.

“There is a large unmet need to improve treatment for men with newly diagnosed metastatic cancer, who die of the disease within less than five years on average,” said lead study author Karim Fizazi head of the Department of Cancer Medicine at Gustave Roussy, University Paris-Sud in Villejuif, France.

Prostate cancer is the leading cause of death among men in the United States, with more than 161,000 new cases diagnosed each year and more than 26,000 deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.

A second clinical trial involving nearly 2,000 men showed that adding abiraterone to a standard initial treatment regimen for high-risk, advanced prostate cancer lowered the relative risk of death by 37 percent.

The study was the largest to date on abiraterone as first-line therapy for advanced prostate cancer, in combination with standard therapy.

“Abiraterone not only prolonged life, but also lowered the chance of relapse by 70 percent and reduced the chance of serious bone complications by 50 percent,” said lead study author Nicholas James, professor of clinical oncology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

“Based on the magnitude of clinical benefit, we believe that the upfront care for patients newly diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer should change.”