Gents, this is a very interesting article on new research possible explaining why hormone therapy treatment for prostate cancer, invariably fails within two years. Something that has mystified doctors for many years. However, the new findings, even if validated, would not persuade me to undertake this next to useless therapy, which, as you would know, inevitably leads to the barbaric removal of ones testicles. To what end I don’t know as oftentimes, it is too late for further treatment anyhow.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2008) — Some of the drugs given to many men during their fight against prostate cancer can actually spur some cancer cells to grow, researchers have found.

The results may help explain a phenomenon that has bedeviled patients for decades. Hormone therapy, a common treatment for men with advanced prostate cancer, generally keeps the cancer at bay for a year or two. But then, for reasons scientists have never understood, the treatment fails in patients whose disease has spread – the cancer begins to grow again, at a time when patients have few treatment options left.

The new findings by a team led by Chawnshang Chang, Ph.D., director of the George Whipple Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center, help explain the process by showing that the androgen receptor, through which male hormones like testosterone work, is much more versatile than previously thought. Under certain conditions the molecule spurs growth, and at other times the molecule squelches growth – just like the same molecule does to hair in different locations on a man’s head.

See the full article, and others on prostate cancer, at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080821110121.htm

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