Although the sentiment in recent years has been to avoid using ADT as a primary treatment for prostate cancer, that only emerged in the last decade as the list of adverse effects of ADT began to grow. This paper takes a retrospective look at data on 649 Japanese patients, who received ADT as a primary treatment between 1998 and 2005. The authors’ primary outcome was PSA progression–free survival, for which they had a fairly rigorous definition.
Overall the authors found some genuine survival benefit to ADT when used as a primary treatment. What we find intriguing about this study is that it suggests that ADT in general might be both more effective and more tolerated by Japanese than Caucasian men.
Tomioka A, Tanaka N, Yoshikawa M, Miyake M, Anai S, Chihara Y, Okajima E, Hirayama A, Hirao Y, Fujimoto K. 2015. Risk factors of PSA progression and overall survival in patients with localized and locally advanced prostate cancer treated with primary androgen deprivation therapy. BMC Cancer 15:420. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25990314