The influence of age and comorbidity on the benefit of adding androgen deprivation to dose-escalated radiation in men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. By Bian et al. 2014
Concluding summary from the paper: “The addition of ADT to dose-escalated external beam radiotherapy can improve outcomes for both younger and older men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. This benefit was more pronounced in healthy men.”
For the full abstract, see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24732810
Commentary: This abstract in some ways is a counter-point to the study by Seible et al. (see the post below). Here the authors ask whether younger men are more likely to benefit, in terms of PSA control, from having ADT along with external beam radiotherapy. They showed that the addition of ADT improves the benefit of the radiotherapy for men regardless of age, but the benefit is more pronounced in healthy men (those with no or mild comorbidity).
ADT improves the effectiveness of external beam radiotherapy in healthy men. However, it should be noted that younger men are at greater risk for weight gain when they start on ADT than older men.
Bian SX, Kuban DA, Levy LB, Oh J, Choi S, McGuire SE, Frank SJ, Mahmood U, Nguyen PL, Pugh TJ, Lee AK, Hoffman KE. 2014. The influence of age and comorbidity on the benefit of adding androgen deprivation to dose-escalated radiation in men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. American Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2014 April 11 [Epub ahead of print]