Thalidomide may play a role in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer, according to a new study, reported in The Journal of Urology (Volume 181, page 1104). Here’s what the researchers found …
For the study, 159 men with hormone-responsive prostate cancer received six months of androgen-deprivation therapy before being randomized to receive thalidomide or a placebo. Additional androgen-deprivation therapy was given for six months when PSA progression (a sign of prostate cancer recurrence) resumed. In the second phase of the trial, men who had been taking thalidomide were switched to placebo and those on placebo were switched to thalidomide.
In the first phase of the trial, the median time until PSA progression was 15 months in the thalidomide group and 10 months in the placebo group, an insignificant difference in this small study. In the second phase, the time to progression was significantly longer in the thalidomide group: 17 versus seven months. It's unknown whether this delay in PSA progression might translate into longer survival.
Although thalidomide was linked to birth defects in the 1950s, researchers have since discovered that it interferes with the abnormal growth of blood vessels seen in prostate cancer. If larger studies with longer follow-up confirm these results, thalidomide may provide doctors with an additional option for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.
