Prostate cancer strategy

[statusquobuster]

The old joke that most men will die with prostate cancer rather than from it turns out to be pretty correct. Though we often hear about men undergoing surgery or some other conventional treatment for prostate cancer, such as radiation, we hear much less about the alternative medicine strategy. An exception is the recent statement by radio celebrity Don Imus that he is using a diet and exercise approach to address his prostate cancer. Imus says he eats mainly uncooked, organic foods such as raw sauerkraut, flaxseed and very hot peppers and, after several months on this diet, that this approach has stopped his cancer from spreading.



Please read the rest of my article at:

Prostate cancer strategy

 

[geauxtohell]

The old joke that most men will die with prostate cancer rather than from it turns out to be pretty correct. Though we often hear about men undergoing surgery or some other conventional treatment for prostate cancer, such as radiation, we hear much less about the alternative medicine strategy. An exception is the recent statement by radio celebrity Don Imus that he is using a diet and exercise approach to address his prostate cancer. Imus says he eats mainly uncooked, organic foods such as raw sauerkraut, flaxseed and very hot peppers and, after several months on this diet, that this approach has stopped his cancer from spreading.



Please read the rest of my article at:

Prostate cancer strategy

There is absolutely no evidenced based medicine that supports the use of diet and exercise as a means to control cancer. I personally don't have a problem with alternative treatment modalities. I do have a problem with the adherents of alternative medicine refusing to conform to the scientific method to support their claims. IMO they over promise and under deliver.

That's not necessarily detrimental until it borders into areas where medical intervention with treatments that have have been to demonstrated to work (albeit not without side effects) are demonified in favor of treatment modalities that have been demonstrated not to work. One of the most disturbing/sad things I have seen as a medical student was a young woman who had ductal cell carcinoma in her mouth (it was the primary lesion, one of those weird things) who bypassed chemo and rads in favor of a "naturopathic approach" to curing the cancer by having it injected with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). By the time she represented back to the hospital a year later, her tumor almost occluded her entire pharynx. Her prognosis was dismal.

You are correct about prostate cancer, though. The belief now is that eventually every man that lives long enough is going to at least have BPH if not cancer and considering the survival rates:

For all men with prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society, the relative five-year survival rate is 100 percent and the relative 10-year survival rate is 91 percent. Over 15 years, the relative survival rate is 76 percent.

The belief now is to simply not treat it considering the side effects of surgery, etc. That convention was come to by oncologists without the input of alternative medicine.

 

[Diuretic]

I reckon anyone can try and quack treatment they like just as long as they don't reject the conventional (and scientifically proven) ones.

Blokes, get an annual examination as well as the PSA analysis. Yes it's uncomfortable but it only takes a few minutes. So, get your fingers out* and get your doc's fingers in there instead!


*That exhortation may not travel well - it means to stop slacking off.

 

[geauxtohell]

I reckon anyone can try and quack treatment they like just as long as they don't reject the conventional (and scientifically proven) ones.

Blokes, get an annual examination as well as the PSA analysis. Yes it's uncomfortable but it only takes a few minutes. So, get your fingers out* and get your doc's fingers in there instead!


*That exhortation may not travel well - it means to stop slacking off.

The problem with herbal and alternative medicine here in the United States is that as long as they include these magic words:

"This statement has not be evaluated by the FDA. Not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease"

They can basically make all sorts of fantastic claims.

None of which are supported by evidence based medicine.

Don't get me wrong, traditional medicine has it's pitfalls away from EBM as well. Off the top of my head, I think it was once considered en vogue to treat septic shock with corticosteroids. The logic was to suppress the immune system and prevent the body from going haywire from the sepsis. It seemed logical, but when you looked at the numbers, it was absolute bunk and may have contributed to poorer outcomes.

Traditional medicine is rife with examples like that. The difference is that there are a ton of people conducting studies to evaluate these statement s and publish their results. When something significant is found, it is adapted and the practice changes.

We are biological creatures. Biology is science. You simply can't divorce the scientific method from healthcare.

 

[waltky]

Side effects of of prostate cancer could be worse than the disease...

Study sees prostate cancer treatment side effects
Jan 30,`13 - A new study shows how important it is for men to carefully consider treatments for early-stage prostate cancer. Fifteen years after surgery or radiation treatment, nearly all of the older men in the study had some problems having sex.

About one-fifth had bladder or bowel trouble, researchers found. The study doesn't compare these men - who were 70 to 89 at the end of the study - to others who did not treat their cancers or to older men without the disease. At least one study suggests that half that age group has sexual problems even when healthy. The study isn't a rigorous test of surgery and radiation, but it is the longest follow-up of some men who chose those treatments.

Since early prostate cancers usually don't prove fatal but there are no good ways to tell which ones really need treatment, men must be realistic about side effects they might suffer, said one study leader, Dr. David Penson of Vanderbilt University. "They need to look at these findings and say, `Oh my gosh, no matter what I choose, I'm going to have some quality-of-life effect and it's probably greater than my doctor is telling me,'" he said. The study appears in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men. In the United States alone, there were about 240,000 new cases and 28,000 deaths from the disease last year. Radiation or surgery to remove the prostate are common treatments when the disease is confined to the gland. Men usually live a long time after treatment - 14 years on average - so it's important to see how they fare, said another study leader, Vanderbilt's Dr. Matthew Resnick. The study involved 1,655 men diagnosed in 1994 or 1995, when they were ages 55 to 74. About two-thirds of them had surgery and the rest, radiation. They were surveyed two, five and 15 years later. By that time, 569 had died.

Men who had surgery had more problems in the first few years after their treatments than those given radiation, but by the end of the study, there was no big difference. After 15 years, 18 percent of the surgery group and 9 percent of the radiation group reported urinary incontinence, and 5 percent of the surgery group and 16 percent of the radiation group said they were bothered by bowel problems. But the differences between the two groups could have occurred by chance alone once researchers took other factors such as age and the size of the men's tumors into account.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Nasal Spray Cancer Vaccine Shrinks Melanoma, Prostate Cancer Tumors...

Nasal Spray Cancer Vaccine Shrinks Head and Neck Tumors
February 14, 2013 : A promising new vaccine - administered as a nasal spray - is being developed to treat head and neck cancers. It is one of a growing number of vaccines developed in the last few years to fight cancer.

When a person develops cancer, the body mounts an immune response against the renegade cells but it is often too weak to halt their spread. So, to supplement radiation and chemotherapy treatment, scientists have been working to develop vaccines to boost the body’s natural defenses against the tumors. Two promising vaccines in late-stage human trials target prostate cancer and metastatic melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Another vaccine in the pipeline is designed to treat solid tumors that form in the mucosal tissues that line passages in the head, neck, lungs and genitals. The tissues produce a thick lubricating fluid containing powerful chemicals that normally protect against infection. Unfortunately, they also also block the immune cells that would otherwise fight the cancerous tumors. Now researchers have developed a nasal spray vaccine which overcomes this resistance, activating and mobilizing a specific type of immune cell, called a CD8+ T-cell, in the tissue at the tumor site.

Eric Tartour, a researcher with the Universite Paris Descarte, led a team studying the effectiveness of the intranasal spray on solid mucosal tumors in mice. He says the tumors developed after the mice were infected with a strain of human papilloma virus that’s known to cause cancer. “The tumor shrank," said Tartour. "And we also analyzed the tumors after they shrank. And they were heavily infiltrated by immune cells which destroyed the tumors.”

Tartour and colleagues also compared the effectiveness of their vaccine when it was injected, and found it was less potent than when given by nasal spray. “What we demonstrated in this study is that it is important the way that you administer a vaccine," he said. "It is not only [important] to have a good cancer vaccine. It is also important to have a proper way to administer it.” Tartour says the researchers' next goal is to see how well their intranasal vaccine, which has been five years in development, works against tumors that have metastasized or spread to distant sites in the body. Eric Tartour and colleagues describe their anti-cancer nasal spray in an article in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source

 

[waltky]

Should it be treated immediately or monitored?...

Gene test may help guide prostate cancer treatment
8 May`13 - A new genetic test to gauge the aggressiveness of prostate cancer may help tens of thousands of men each year decide whether they need to treat their cancer right away or can safely monitor it.

The new test, which goes on sale Wednesday, joins another one that recently came on the market. Both analyze multiple genes in a biopsy sample and give a score for aggressiveness, similar to tests used now for certain breast and colon cancers.

Doctors say tests like these have the potential to curb a major problem in cancer care — overtreatment. Prostate tumors usually grow so slowly they will never threaten a man's life, but some prove fatal and there is no reliable way now to tell which ones will. Treatment with surgery, radiation or hormone blockers isn't needed in most cases and can cause impotence or incontinence, yet most men are afraid to skip it. "We're not giving patients enough information to make their decision," said Dr. Peter Carroll, chairman of urology at the University of California, San Francisco. "You can shop for a toaster" better than for prostate treatment, he said.

A study he led of the newest test — the Oncotype DX Genomic Prostate Score — is set for discussion Wednesday at an American Urological Association meeting in San Diego. The results suggest the test could triple the number of men thought to be at such low risk for aggressive disease that monitoring is a clearly safe option. Conversely, the test also suggested some tumors were more aggressive than doctors had believed.

Independent experts say such a test is desperately needed but that it's unclear how much information this one adds or whether it will be enough to persuade men with low-risk tumors to forgo treatment, and treat it only if it gets worse. Only 10 percent who are candidates for monitoring choose it now. "The question is, what's the magnitude of difference that would change the patient's mind?" said Dr. Bruce Roth, a cancer specialist at Washington University in St. Louis. One man may view a 15 percent chance that his tumor is aggressive as low risk "but someone else might say, 'Oh my God, let's set the surgery up tomorrow,'" he said. "I don't think it's a slam dunk." Also unknown: Will insurers pay for the expensive test without evidence it leads to better care or saves lives?

MORE

 

[tyroneweaver]

Im sixty four and have a high psa. I'm on fenesteride and it cuts it in half. I've had two biopsies and both of have been a disaster.
ended up in the hospitol over night with reactions
I was adopted and have no way of knowing my history.
Is the gene therapy readily available by most urologist

 

[editec]

Best protection against prostate cancer?

Choose better parents.

LIFE is carcinogenic, folks.

 

[George Costanza]

Best protection against prostate cancer?

Choose better parents.

LIFE is carcinogenic, folks.

But seriously, folks - the best protection against prostate cancer is an annual PSA, starting at age 40. The PSA test is a blood test - they just throw in an additional analysis of the blood along with all of the other analyses they always make anyway.

 

[waltky]

Not much difference what ya do...

Prostate cancer options show little difference in survival
Thursday 15th September, 2016: Men with localized prostate cancer were unlikely to die in the 10 years after diagnosis regardless of whether they chose surgery, radiation or no intervention at all, researchers said Wednesday.

The findings in the New England Journal of Medicine included more than 1,600 men aged 50-69 who agreed to be randomly assigned to either surgery to remove the tumor, radiation to shrink it or active monitoring -- a wait and see approach. About one percent of men in the study died within 10 years of prostate cancer, "irrespective of the treatment assigned, a rate that was considerably lower than was anticipated when the trial commenced," said the study, led by Freddie Hamdy of Oxford University. Of the 1,643 men in the study, 17 died of prostate cancer in the next decade after diagnosis -- eight in the active monitoring group, five in the surgery group and four in the radiotherapy group. Those in the active-monitoring group were more likely to see the cancer spread elsewhere in the body, a process known as metastasis.

However, this disease progression did not make for significant differences in the likelihood of dying from cancer or any other cause in the 10 years after diagnosis, the study said. A separate article in the same journal examined quality of life issues among the men who chose different options. Surgery to remove the prostate had the greatest negative effect on sexual function and urinary incontinence, it found. Men in the radiation group tended to experience more bowel problems after treatment than the other groups. "Sexual function appears to be better in the radiation therapy group," said Louis Potters, chairman of the department of radiation medicine at Northwell Health in New York, who was not involved in the study.

Potters praised the research as "the first real effort to assess treatment approaches for prostate cancer." "Despite the high prevalence of prostate cancer as the number one cancer in men, there has not recently been a study that has directly addressed observation, surgery or radiation therapy," he added. "As a result, men have had to make treatment decisions based on non-comparative data."

For John Burn, professor of clinical genetics at Newcastle University, the study provides "valuable information for men faced with difficult choices." "The bottom line seems to be that for these men with localized prostate cancer, active monitoring is not significantly more dangerous and avoids the potential burden of medically induced sexual or bowel impairment," added Burn, who was not involved in the study. "Many will conclude that doing nothing is preferable to surgery or radiotherapy. Obviously if there is evidence of spread the situation is different."

Prostate cancer options show little difference in survival