Factors Predicting the Off-treatment Duration in Patients with Prostate Cancer Receiving Degarelix as Intermittent Androgen Deprivation Therapy

What Was Tested

This clinical trial paper looks at Degarelix.

To evaluate if certain factors can predict OTP duration following 7-mo degarelix therapy.

Why It Was Studied

The off-treatment time for patients depends on cancer progression, often measured as a rise in prostate-specific antigen (PSA).

Who Took Part

The study group was 191 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults and people over 80, men only.

This multivariable analysis included 191 prostate cancer patients with baseline PSA 4-50 ng/ml or PSA doubling time <24 mo entering the first OTP with PSA ≤4 ng/ml and testosterone <0.5 ng/ml.

A Weibull distribution was used to estimate median time to PSA >4 ng/ml adjusted for the following variables: age; baseline (or end of induction period [EOI]) PSA; baseline testosterone; cancer stage/previous curative treatment; and Gleason score.

How the Study Was Run

OTP continued until disease progression, measured as PSA >4 ng/ml.

Time to testosterone recovery (testosterone >0.5 and >2.2 ng/ml) was estimated in a similar manner.

The researchers describe extended analysis results for a trial in which patients with prostate cancer received intermittent androgen deprivation treatment.

Prostate-specific antigen levels at baseline and at the end of the induction period, as well as older age, predicted the duration of the off-treatment period.

Testosterone recovery was slower in older patients and in patients who had lower pretreatment testosterone levels.

What Was Measured

The off-treatment time for patients depends on cancer progression, often measured as a rise in prostate-specific antigen (PSA).

The subject headings attached to it are Androgen Antagonists, Disease Progression, Neoplasm Grading, Oligopeptides, Predictive Value of Tests, Prostate-Specific Antigen and Prostatic Neoplasms.

Author keywords: Intermittent androgen deprivation, Off-treatment period, Predictive factors and Prostate cancer.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of Degarelix in 191 patients.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2017 (European urology focus), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Degarelix compound page, all human trials.