THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

A recent article (and an associated editorial) in the Archives of Internal Medicine evaluated how visits to specialists and primary care physicians (PCPs) by men with localized prostate cancer are related to treatment choice. The Archives article is available in full on line, and is worth a read for relatively newly diagnosed patients....

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In a commentary in Forbes, Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at the New York University Langone Medical Center, writes that “the American Cancer Society completely missed the boat when … they suggested not screening a patient until the age of 50 and de-emphasized the use of the...

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The pharmaceutical company Roche announced this morning that the combination of bevacizumab (Avastin) with docetaxel and prednisone does not extend the overall survival of men with hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) compared to docetaxel + prednisone alone. While this will obviously be a disappointment to men with advanced, progressive disease who have...

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According to a new report from HealthDay, “scientists” have made yet another discovery in a mouse model that “may someday save men’s lives,” which may well be true, but is hardly “the key” promised in the article’s headline! This report is based on a letter to the editor by Ammirante et...

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Last Thursday (March 4), the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on screening and diagnosis of prostate cancer and related issues. The entire hearing can now be viewed on line on the C-Span web site. This was the first Congressional hearing on prostate cancer for a...

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Well an OpEd in the New York Times today is going to upset a lot of men (and maybe a lot of women too) … but then as the man who initially identified prostate specific antigen, Dr. Ablin is certainly entitled to express his opinion. To read his OpEd, you should just...

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Dr. Guy Dimonte is a specialist in fluid dynamics who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in  New Mexico. He has recently applied the mathematical approaches used to model dynamic systems to develop a new model for the progression of prostate cancer from diagnosis onwards. In the February issue of...

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As mentioned previously, there were over 200 new presentations on prostate cancer at the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers meeting in San Francisco on Friday and Saturday last week, and there is no way we can report on most of these. However, for what it is worth, here is a very brief...

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In June 2009 we reported on data suggesting that the monocolonal antibody ipilimumab appeared to be capable of “downstaging” more advanced forms of prostate cancer such that the patients became re-eligible for localized therapy with curative intent. It’s time for an update based on data presented at the Genitourinary Cancers...

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Stan Goldberg writes a regular column for Examiner.com on “end of life” issues. However, after the Congressional hearing on prostate cancer in Washington, DC, last Thursday, he turned his thoughts to something that is clearly, for him, a little closer to home. It’s worth a read. Filed under: Uncategorized ...

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Several years ago (2006 to be precise) it was reported — by Mori et al. and by Sánchez et al. — that capsaicin (the strong-smelling, active component of chili peppers) was able to kill prostate cancer cells in mouse-based cell cultures. In an article published in February, Jankovic et al. have...

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It would be easy to get the impression that there is nothing new on the prostate cancer front except what’s coming out from San Francisco, but here’s some interesting new information from Germany and Sweden. Brandt et al. set out to determine the age-specific risks of prostate cancer and the risk...

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Some days ago we commented on a media release issued by Myriad Genetics which stated that their new PROLARIS™ test “identifies patients at low risk of disease recurrence with 95% certainty.” We have now been able to see the actual data presented by Swanson et al. at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium...

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The RTOG 94-08 clinical trial was designed to test the idea that just 4 months of hormone therapy, administered  before and during radiation therapy, would improved the overall survival of patients diagnosed with clinical stage T1b-T2b prostate cancer and a PSA level equal to or lower than 20 ng/ml. The final...

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Three papers presented on Friday at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco addressed the near-term development of tests that may be able to improve our ability to accurately diagnose clinically significant prostate cancer. In the first of these papers, Aubin et al. presented data on a urine-based assay of messenger...

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