New treatment gives Hong Kong prostate cancer patients 22 months more to live
People with advanced prostate cancer can live for an average of 22 months longer with combination of chemo and hormonal treatment
Patients with advanced prostate cancer may be able to extend their lives by an average of 22 months by combining conventional hormone treatment with chemotherapy, a joint British-Swiss study has found.
The new finding could provide hope to the 1,600-odd Hongkongers each year who are diagnosed with the disease, the third most common cancer among men, according to 2012 data from the Hospital Authority's Cancer Registry.
The conventional treatment involves hormone therapy - in the form of testicle removal, injections or oral pills. This allows patients to live for an average of 43 months more, but they often develop drug resistance after two to three years.
Including chemotherapy at an earlier stage could reduce drug resistance due to hormone treatment, said Dr Darren Poon Ming-chun, of Chinese University's clinical oncology department. "Combination therapy has proven to be effective and is a major breakthrough for research in advanced prostate cancer," Poon said.
At least one public hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin, has started adopting it. Patients pay about HK$36,000 more, on top of their heavily subsidised hormone therapy.
The new approach, however, leads to a higher risk of neutropenia, a condition in which immunity weakens because of a drop in the number of white blood cells.
Researchers in the study detected the symptom in 12 per cent of patients taking combination therapy, compared with 1 per cent of those who received only hormone treatment.
The study was conducted on 2,962 patients with advanced prostate cancer between 2005 and 2013 in Britain and Switzerland.
Patients began undergoing chemotherapy within four months of starting hormone treatment. They received one dose of chemotherapy every three months during the treatment period of 18 months.
While the conventional approach allowed survival for 43 months, combination therapy patients lived up to 65 months more - an extra 22 months.
The research findings were announced at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago more than three weeks ago.
Prince of Wales Hospital had been applying the treatment since late last year. Poon said: "With [the release of] the research results in 2015, the chances of application would be higher."
So far, the hospital had been putting some 10 patients through the new approach.
One of its patients, a 49-year-old man, saw his prostate-specific antigen - a protein that indicates prostate cancer - drop significantly, back to the normal range, after he was started on chemotherapy in February.
Previously, his antigen level had remained above the normal index of four after three shots of hormone therapy.
