In recent years, there has been growing interest in using ADT intermittently rather than as continuous therapy, with the hope was that one could get comparable cancer control, but with few adverse effects.
This paper challenges that. The authors conducted a retrospective study of 1134 patients with metastatic prostate cancer and found that the men in the intermittent treatment group had more, not less, serious cardiovascular events. Clearly prospective follow-up studies are in order.
Hershman DL, Unger JM, Wright JD, Ramsey S, Till C, Tangen CM, Barlow WE, Blanke C, Thompson IM, & Hussain M. (2016) Adverse Health Events Following Intermittent and Continuous Androgen Deprivation in Patients With Metastatic Prostate Cancer. JAMA Oncol [Epub ahead of print] 23 December 2015. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26720308