Serum markers as a predictor of response duration and patient survival after hormonal therapy for metastatic carcinoma of the prostate.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Androgen Antagonists in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Prostate specific antigen (PSA), prostatic acid phosphatase and alkaline phosphatase were analyzed in 2 large prospective multicenter and multinational trials to assess their correlation with time to progression and overall survival after hormonal therapy for metastatic carcinoma of the prostate.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 868 patients taking part.

PubMed tags the participants as men only.

A total of 868 patients who underwent medical or surgical castration was randomized to receive an oral antiandrogen (nilutamide) or placebo.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, placebo-controlled and multicenter.

Because people in this Androgen Antagonists study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Androgen Antagonists group a baseline to be compared against.

Running at several centres spread the Androgen Antagonists study over different clinics and patient groups.

The serum markers under study were measured at baseline and at 1, 3, 6 and every 6 months thereafter.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acid Phosphatase, Alkaline Phosphatase, Androgen Antagonists, Antineoplastic Agents, Hormonal, Bone Neoplasms, Disease Progression and Disease-Free Survival.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and multicenter study of Androgen Antagonists in 868 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1997 (The Journal of urology), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.