CHICAGO — A study links hormone therapy for prostate cancer with a higher risk of death in older men who’ve had serious heart problems.
Hormone therapy suppresses the amount of testosterone produced, in turn causing prostate tumors to shrink or grow more slowly. But the side effects are troubling: impotence, bone loss, hot flashes, memory problems, fatigue and an increased risk for diabetes and heart disease.
The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association followed more than 5,000 men with prostate cancer that hadn’t spread. They all had brachytherapy, a radiation treatment, at one Illinois treatment center. Thirty percent of them also took hormone therapy for an average of four months.
Among those with heart problems, the hormone treatment was linked with a 96 percent higher risk of death after adjusting for other risk factors.
The Associated Press
