BOSTON, Aug 26, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Hormone therapy for prostate cancer
patients with congestive heart failure or heart attack is linked to increased
death risk, U.S. researchers said.
Hormonal therapy is used as a means for prostate gland cytoreduction -- prostate
shrinkage.
Dr. Akash Nanda of Brigham & Women's Hospital Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in
Boston and colleagues assessed 5,077 men with localized or locally advanced
prostate cancer who were treated with or without a median of four months of
hormone therapy followed by radiation therapy from 1997 to 2006, who were
followed-up until July 2008.
During the study period, 419 men died. Of those, 200 had no underlying
comorbidity, but 176 had one coronary artery disease risk factor and 43 had a
history of known coronary artery disease resulting in congestive heart failure
or heart attack.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found
hormone therapy was not associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality
in men with no comorbidity -- 9.6 percent versus 6.7 percent -- or a single
coronary artery disease risk factor after median follow-ups of up to five years.
However, for men with coronary artery disease -- congestive heart failure or
heart attack -- after a median follow-up of 5.1 years, hormone therapy was
associated with nearly twice the risk of all-cause mortality of 26.3 percent
versus 11.2 percent, the study said.
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