Scientists from National Cancer Institute found that hormone therapy for prostate cancer increases the risk of cardiovascular disease-related death, especially in older men.
They found an elevated risk of death from heart disease in men with prostate cancer treated with hormone-lowering drugs compared with those who were not.
The highest risk was for coronary heart disease and stroke. The increased risks were apparent from the second year after cancer diagnosis and were more pronounced in older men.
The research is published in The Aging Male and was conducted by Justinas Jonusas et al.
Hormone therapy—which is also known as androgen deprivation therapy—is a mainstay treatment for patients with prostate cancer.
The treatment uses surgery or drugs to lower the levels of hormones (such as testosterone) in the body fuelling cancer growth.
While some previous research has suggested that hormone therapy can increase the risk of negative cardiovascular outcomes, other studies have not found such a link, leaving the link between prostate cancer treatment and heart disease unclear.
In the study, researchers used data from 13,343 men aged 40 to 79 years who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2012 and 2016.
They compared the risk of death from cardiovascular disease among the 3,797 patients who had received hormone-lowering drugs and 9,546 who had not.
The researchers found a more than two-fold increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease in men who had received hormone therapy.
A higher risk of heart disease-related death from the second year onwards following a prostate cancer diagnosis.
An almost five-fold higher risk in the 70 to 79 age group of those who received hormone therapy compared to those who did not.
The team also assessed the risk of death from several subtypes of cardiovascular disease, identifying there was a higher risk of dying specifically from stroke or coronary heart disease.
These risks were 42% and 70% higher, respectively, in men treated with hormone therapy compared to those who were not.
The team says prostate cancer is typically diagnosed in older men, over 65 years or older—and many of them will have already been diagnosed with heart disease.
This group of patients should be screened for pre-existing heart disease and their risk factors to minimize the risk of dying from these conditions.
This is the first study to analyze hormone-therapy-induced cardiovascular death in a national cohort, based on real-world data.
If you care about prostate cancer, please read studies about egg intake and prostate cancers, and a new strategy to treat advanced prostate cancer.
For more information about prostate cancer, please see recent studies about a new way to lower the risk of prostate cancer spread, and results showing three-drug combo boosts survival in metastatic prostate cancer.
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