Prostate hormone therapy a risk to some

Hormone therapy for prostate cancer patients with congestive heart failure or heart attack is linked to increased death risk, U.S. researchers said.

Hormonal therapy is used as a means for prostate gland cytoreduction — prostate shrinkage.

Dr. Akash Nanda of Brigham & Women’s Hospital Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and colleagues assessed 5,077 men with localized or locally advanced prostate cancer who were treated with or without a median of four months of hormone therapy followed by radiation therapy from 1997 to 2006, who were followed-up until July 2008.

During the study period, 419 men died. Of those, 200 had no underlying comorbidity, but 176 had one coronary artery disease risk factor and 43 had a history of known coronary artery disease resulting in congestive heart failure or heart attack.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found hormone therapy was not associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality in men with no comorbidity — 9.6 percent versus 6.7 percent — or a single coronary artery disease risk factor after median follow-ups of up to five years.

However, for men with coronary artery disease — congestive heart failure or heart attack — after a median follow-up of 5.1 years, hormone therapy was associated with nearly twice the risk of all-cause mortality of 26.3 percent versus 11.2 percent, the study said.