Prostate Cancer Drugs Aren’t Tied to Heart Attacks, Study Says
December 08, 2011, 6:14 PM ESTBy Ryan Flinn
Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Prostate cancer drugs from AstraZeneca Plc, Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. and others don’t increase the risk of heart attacks in men with no history of the disease, a study said, contradicting earlier reports.
The prescription medicines used to lower male hormones, a treatment known as androgen deprivation therapy, didn’t result in more cases of cardiovascular disease compared with men not taking the medications, according to research published today by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Men on the therapy also lived longer.
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would review published studies about the safety of prescription medicines used for androgen deprivation therapy, after six studies showed a small increase in the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
“This message should be reassuring for the vast majority of patients considering androgen deprivation therapy,” Paul Nguyen, a radiation oncologist at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center in Boston, and study author, said in a statement. “If you need ADT for your prostate cancer, go ahead and have it. Hormones can save lives.”
Prostate cancer is the second-most-common cancer among U.S. men and causes more than 27,000 deaths each year, according to the American Cancer Society. Androgen deprivation therapy, used along with radiation, decreases the production of the hormone testosterone, which fuels prostate cancer cell growth. Side effects can include cholesterol imbalances, weight gain and insulin resistance, factors that can increase heart disease.
Study Findings
The new study examined the results of eight trials of 4,141 patients with prostate cancer that had spread beyond the gland. Eleven percent of patients on the therapy died from heart disease, compared with 11.2 percent in the control group, an insignificant difference, according to the report. In a further analysis of 4,805 patients from 11 trials, about 37.7 percent on the medicines died, compared with 44.4 percent in the untreated group.
Androgen deprivation therapy drugs cited last year by the FDA under their watch list included Zoladex from London-based AstraZeneca; Lupron from Abbott Park, Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories, and its generic equivalents, Trelstar from Watson Pharmaceuticals in Corona, California, and Vantas from Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc. in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
The study was funded by the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy Foundation, a Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship and private donors.
--Editors: Angela Zimm, Bruce Rule
To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net.
