|
medpundit |
||
 |
 |
|
Thursday, June 26, 2003The National Cancer Institute estimates that if 1,000 63-year-old men are tracked, after seven years, 60 of them would develop prostate cancer, with 18 of those men suffering with high-grade tumors, which spread quickly. If the same men took finasteride for seven years, only 45 would get the cancer, but 22 would have the more aggressive tumors. The study found the following: Prostate cancer was detected in 803 of the 4368 men in the finasteride group who had data for the final analysis (18.4 percent) and 1147 of the 4692 men in the placebo group who had such data (24.4 percent), for a 24.8 percent reduction in prevalence over the seven-year period (95 percent confidence interval, 18.6 to 30.6 percent; P<0.001). Tumors of Gleason grade 7, 8, 9, or 10[the aggressive types of cancer - ed.] were more common in the finasteride group (280 of 757 tumors [37.0 percent], or 6.4 percent of the 4368 men included in the final analysis) than in the placebo group (237 of 1068 tumors [22.2 percent], P<0.001 for the comparison between groups; or 5.1 percent of the 4692 men included in the final analysis, P=0.005 for the comparison between groups). Those are clinically significant differences in the rates of cancer, both for the overall decrease and for the increase in aggressive cancers. One more difficult decision in the prevention of prostate cancer. To screen or not to screen? To take a drug or not? Is it worth the potential harm? One thing for sure, it probably isn’t worth risking the aggressive cancer for a few more hairs: For young men using the drug to promote hair growth, "I certainly wouldn't want to be taking a drug that potentially promotes cancer of the mean types," Dartmouth's Wasson said. "First, do no harm, that's the bottom line with any drug or treatment ... if you're a young guy, you should really be concerned about finasteride. posted by Sydney on 6/26/2003 08:35:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
|
