Washington, Aug. 9 : In a retrospective study, the researchers have found that African-American men, who were treated with ADT (androgen deprivation therapy), had a 77 percent higher risk of death when compared to non-African American men.
The study states that an individual's race significantly affected their longevity by increasing the likelihood of death after receiving ADT.
The therapy is used to reduce the size of the prostate to make a patient eligible for prostate brachytherapy.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital analyzed the medical records of over 7000 men, who had low or favourable-intermediate risk prostate cancer, 20 percent of whom were treated with ADT to make them eligible for brachytherapy (radioactive implants for treatment of prostrate cancer).
Konstantin Kovtun, a resident at BWH, said, "When African-American men were exposed to an average of only four months of hormone therapy, primarily used to make the prostate small enough for brachytherapy, they suffered from higher mortality rates due to causes other than prostate cancer than non-African American men." He added, "This leads us to believe that there may be something intrinsic to the biology of African-American men that predisposes them to this increased risk of death and that this deserves further study." Anthony D'Amico, chief of Genitourinary Radiation Oncology at BWH, said: "These results show that careful consideration should be taken by physicians when recommending treatment for low or favorable-intermediate prostate cancer, a cancer that very few men die of even without treatment." These findings are published in the August 4, 2016 issue of 'Cancer'.
Source: ANI
