(Press-News.org) Survival rates for men with metastatic prostate cancer have increased by an average of six months, something which coincides with the gradual introduction of ‘dual treatment’ since 2016. This is according to a register study of all Swedish men diagnosed between 2008 and 2020. The results are published in the medical journal JAMA Network open.
Dual treatment means that patients receive both standard hormone therapy (GnRH therapy) and chemotherapy or androgen receptor blockers. Research has previously shown that men receiving this treatment live approximately one year longer than those receiving GnRH treatment alone.
“Dual treatment for men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer was gradually introduced in Sweden after the results of the randomised trials came in, and dual treatment is now recommended in the national care programme for prostate cancer. We wanted to see if the change in treatment of these patients was followed by increased survival,” explains Marcus Westerberg from the Department of Surgical Sciences at Uppsala University, one of the researchers behind the study.
Researchers from Uppsala University and San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy, used the National Prostate Cancer Register (NPCR) to study all men diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in Sweden between 2008 and 2020.
The results showed that in 2016 only 1 percent of men at this stage received dual therapy, while 40 percent received it in 2020. The largest increase was among men aged under 65 and the smallest increase among men over 80.
The average survival rate among these men increased from 2.7 between 2008 and 2012 to 3.2 years in 2017–2020; equivalent to an increase of about six months. The biggest increase in survival was among men under 80. In the analysis, the researchers also took into account age and other diseases.
“Although care should be taken when interpreting our results, we found a clear temporal association between the introduction of dual treatment and improved survival rates. The study suggests that treatments that have been successful in randomised trials are also successful at the population level when introduced into routine care,” Westerberg concludes.
Reference: Corsini, C., Garmo, H., Wilberg Orrason, A., Gedeborg, R., Stattin, P., Westerberg, M. Survival trend in men with de novo metastatic prostate cancer after the introduction of doublet therapy. Nationwide population-based cohort study. JAMA Network Open. 2023; 6(10):e2336604; DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.36604
Facts about the National Prostate Cancer Register (NPCR)
Launched in 1998, it covers about 95 percent of all new prostate cancer cases. The information includes a detailed description of the disease, the treatment the man received, the hospital and the doctor who performed the operation. The ultimate goal of the NPCR is to ensure that all men with prostate cancer receive the right treatment at the right time, regardless of where they live. https://npcr.se/in-english/
END
Men with metastatic prostate cancer live longer thanks to new drugs
2023-10-02
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
A more effective experimental design for engineering a cell into a new state
2023-10-02
A strategy for cellular reprogramming involves using targeted genetic interventions to engineer a cell into a new state. The technique holds great promise in immunotherapy, for instance, where researchers could reprogram a patient’s T-cells so they are more potent cancer killers. Someday, the approach could also help identify life-saving cancer treatments or regenerative therapies that repair disease-ravaged organs.
But the human body has about 20,000 genes, and a genetic perturbation could be on a combination of genes or on any of the over 1,000 transcription factors that regulate the genes. ...
How the hippocampus distinguishes true and false memories
2023-10-02
Let’s say you typically eat eggs for breakfast but were running late and ate cereal. As you crunched on a spoonful of Raisin Bran, other contextual similarities remained: You ate at the same table, at the same time, preparing to go to the same job. When someone asks later what you had for breakfast, you incorrectly remember eating eggs.
This would be a real-world example of a false memory. But what happens in your brain before recalling eggs, compared to what would happen if you correctly recalled cereal?
In a paper published in Proceedings ...
Drier savannas, grasslands store more climate-buffering carbon than previously believed
2023-10-02
Photos
Savannas and grasslands in drier climates around the world store more heat-trapping carbon than scientists thought they did and are helping to slow the rate of climate warming, according to a new study.
The study, published online Oct. 2 in Nature Climate Change, is based on a reanalysis of datasets from 53 long-term fire-manipulation experiments worldwide, as well as a field-sampling campaign at six of those sites.
Twenty researchers from institutions around the globe, including two at the University of Michigan, looked at where and why fire has changed the amount of carbon stored in topsoil. They found that within savanna-grassland regions, ...
Ancient architecture inspires a window to the future
2023-10-02
A centuries-old technique for constructing arched stone windows has inspired a new way to form tailored nanoscale windows in porous functional materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).
The method uses a molecular version of an architectural arch-forming “centring formwork“ template to direct the formation of MOFs with pore windows of predetermined shape and size.[1]. New MOFs designed and made in this way range from narrow-windowed materials with gas separation potential to larger-windowed structures with potential medical applications due to their excellent oxygen-adsorption capacity.
“One of the most challenging ...
Climate and human land use both play roles in Pacific island wildfires past and present
2023-10-02
DALLAS (SMU) – It’s long been understood that human settlement contributes to conditions that make Pacific Islands more susceptible to wildfires, such as the devastating Aug. 8 event that destroyed the Maui community of Lahaina. But a new study from SMU fire scientist Christopher Roos published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution shows that climate is an undervalued part of the equation.
Roos, SMU environmental archaeologist and professor of anthropology, traveled with his team to the Sigatoka ...
DeepMB: a deep learning framework for high-quality optoacoustic imaging in real-time
2023-10-02
Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich have made significant progress in advancing high-resolution optoacoustic imaging for clinical use. Their innovative deep-learning framework, known as DeepMB, holds great promise for patients dealing with a range of illnesses, including breast cancer, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and inflammatory bowel disease. Their findings have been now published in Nature Machine Intelligence.
In order to understand and detect diseases scientists and medical staff often rely on imaging methods such as ultrasound or X-ray. However, ...
Overlooked parts of proteins revealed as critical to fundamental functions of life
2023-10-02
According to textbooks, proteins work by folding into stable 3D shapes that, like Lego blocks, precisely fit with other biomolecules.
Yet this picture of proteins, the "workhorses of biology," is incomplete. Around half of all proteins have stringy, unstructured bits hanging off them, dubbed intrinsically disordered regions, or IDRs. Because IDRs have more dynamic, “shape-shifting” geometries, biologists have generally thought that they cannot have as precise of a fit with other biomolecules as their folded ...
Not the usual suspects: New interactive lineup boosts eyewitness accuracy
2023-10-02
Allowing eyewitnesses to dynamically explore digital faces using a new interactive procedure can significantly improve identification accuracy compared to the video lineup and photo array procedures used by police worldwide, a new study reveals.
Interactive lineups present digital 3D faces that witnesses can rotate and view from different angles using a computer mouse - enabling witnesses to actively explore and match faces to their recollection.
Publishing their findings today (2 Oct) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychologists found that the interactive procedure enhanced people’s ability to correctly identify perpetrators and avoid misidentifications.
Lead ...
Yang developing training dataset labeling tool
2023-10-02
Chaowei Yang, Professor, Director, NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center, Geography and Geoinformation Science, received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "I-Corps: An automatic training dataset labeling tool for producing large amount of quality training datasets."
He and his collaborators are interviewing more than 100 potential customers to: a) identify a customer sector that has the potential to show early success, b) define from a customer perspective a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), c) explore the potential and plan to create a startup by a team composed of ...
Loneliness and risk of Parkinson disease
2023-10-02
About The Study: This study of 491,000 participants followed up for up to 15 years found that loneliness was associated with risk of incident Parkinson disease across demographic groups and independent of depression and other prominent risk factors and genetic risk. The findings add to the evidence that loneliness is a substantial psychosocial determinant of health.
Authors: Antonio Terracciano, Ph.D., of the Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2023.3382)
Editor’s ...