In a nutshell
The authors aimed to determine the changes in cognitive performance (CP) after 6 months of hormone therapy with luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) analogues.
The authors concluded that CP in men with prostate cancer does not appear to be affected following 6 months of LHRH treatment.
Some background
Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), or castration therapy, is the standard of care for advanced prostate cancer. ADT usually involves either surgical castration (surgical removal of the testicles) or medical castration (hormonal therapy), intended to reduce the production of androgens (male sex hormones such as testosterone), or inhibit their effect on cancer cell growth. LHRH analogues are a type of hormone therapy that lower the amount of testosterone produced by the testicles.
Further research is needed to determine whether LHRH treatment impacts CP (mental functioning) in men with prostate cancer.
Methods & findings
The aim of this study was to determine if 6 months treatment with LHRH impacts CP in men with prostate cancer.
308 patients were included in this study. Each patient received more than 6 months of LHRH treatment. Four CP tests were conducted to measure memory and reasoning.
79.6% of patients did not experience any significant changes to CP. 20.4% of patients experienced significant CP changes on one or more tests after treatment. Most of these patients only showed a change on one test. For these patients, this was evenly split between improving on a test and worsening. For individual tests, the majority of patients experienced no change in CP from the beginning of the study until after treatment ended.
The bottom line
The authors concluded that CP in men with prostate cancer does not appear to be affected following 6 months of LHRH treatment.
Published By :
International journal of radiation oncology, biology, physics
Date :
Jul 01, 2017
