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A multi-institutional clinical trial has shown that a newer technique for collecting prostate biopsy samples reduced the risk of infection compared with traditional biopsy approaches. The technique, called transperineal prostate biopsy, collects prostate tissue via a needle through the skin of the perineum, the area between the rectum and the scrotum. The procedure, which uses local anesthesia to numb the area, allows physicians to bypass the traditional and more infection-prone route of collecting prostate biopsy tissue with a needle through the rectum. The study found no infections among 382 men randomized to undergo the transperineal procedure compared with six infections...

Baseball Hall of Famer and former Yankee Wade Boggs has prostate cancer. He made the announcement Saturday night on social media and sounded optimistic, saying he will be ready to take part in the ritual cancer patients have of ringing a bell when they’ve concluded their treatment. “With the strength and support of my family and my faith in God, I’m going to ring that damn bell,” Boggs wrote, adding a photo of a prostate cancer patient guide.

For years, the treatment of early-stage prostate cancers that haven't spread beyond the organ has often included the removal of nearby lymph nodes in the pelvis. It's done as a precaution and as a means of "staging" the disease. Now, a major expert review on the topic suggests that, in many cases, men in this situation may be better off keeping their lymph nodes. Doing so may help them avoid harmful side effects, such as disabling lymphedema. But even more importantly, leaving the pelvic nodes intact might also boost the success of newer immune-based cancer drugs, the experts suspect. One...

Two reduced dose radiopharmaceutical therapy approaches for advanced stage metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer have been shown to be just as effective as the standard dose, according to research. Treatment with deescalated 225Ac-PSMA-617 or a cocktail therapy of 177Lu/225Ac-PSMA-617 resulted in similar median overall survival and prostate specific antigen (PSA) response rates as the standard 225Ac-PSMA-617 dose and was better-tolerated. The standard dose for 225Ac-PSMA targeted radiopharmaceutical alpha-therapy is 100 kBq per kilogram of body weight or an approximation of eight MBq. "Preliminary data has shown that reduced doses result in lower rates of dry mouth while still maintaining promising anti-tumor...

A new study suggests that certain drugs commonly used to treat enlarged prostate may also decrease the risk for dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). This observational finding may seem surprising, but it mirrors previous work that links the drugs to a protective effect in another neurodegenerative condition—Parkinson's disease. The researchers think that a specific side effect of the drugs targets a biological flaw shared by DLB and Parkinson's disease, as well as other neurodegenerative diseases, raising the possibility that they may have broad potential for treating a wide range of neurodegenerative conditions. The researchers used a large database of patient...

Extended prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy (177Lu-PSMA) beyond six cycles is an effective and well-tolerated treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients, according to new research. Selected patients who received extended treatment—either continuously or following a treatment break—experienced a favorable median survival of 31.3 months from the first administration. Said Wolfgang P. Fendler, MD., "It may be beneficial to extend the use of 177Lu-PSMA, however, systematic data on safety and the antitumor effect of 177Lu-PSMA radiopharmaceutical therapy beyond six cycles is scarce." The multicenter retrospective analysis included 111 metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients who received more than six cycles...

For men with benign prostate hyperplasia, aquablation provides temporary benefits for ejaculation and continence at three months, while holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) has superior operation time, safety profile, and volumetric results, according to a study published online. Jakob Michaelis and colleagues compared the outcomes of aquablation (16 patients) and HoLEP (24 patients) among men with benign prostate hyperplasia. The researchers found that HoLEP was associated with shorter operation time (59.5 versus 87.2 minutes) and led to better prostate volume reduction over all timepoints. Aquablation's results were better regarding ejaculatory and continence function at three months. However, there...

Scientists at the Institute for Cancer Research in London said the DIY spit test would catch more aggressive tumours and lead to fewer false alarms than the current NHS system...Men simply spit into a tube at home and send the sample off for lab analysis...Their DNA is checked for high risk genes or damage that could indicate prostate cancer...The study, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference, trialled the test on 6,142 men at GP surgeries in the UK.

Consuming a primarily plant-based diet may be associated with better cancer-specific health outcomes among men with prostate cancer, according to a study. Vivian N. Liu and colleagues examined whether post-diagnostic plant-based dietary patterns are associated with the risk for prostate cancer progression and prostate cancer-specific mortality. The analysis included 2,062 participants in the multisite Cancer of the Prostate Strategic Urologic Research Endeavor study. The researchers found that men scoring in the highest versus lowest quintile of the Plant-based Diet Index (PDI) had lower risk for progression (hazard ratio, 0.53). There was no association for healthful PDI and risk for progression...

Adding a pre-ketone supplement—a component of a high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet—to a type of cancer therapy in a laboratory setting was highly effective for treating prostate cancer, researchers found. Prostate cancer is resistant to a type of immunotherapy called immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. ICB therapy paves the way for our body's fighter cells, T cells, to kill the cancer. Murphy divided the models into different groups: immunotherapy alone, ketogenic diet alone, a pre-ketone supplement alone, the ketogenic diet with the immunotherapy, the supplement with the immunotherapy, and the control. While the immunotherapy alone had almost no effect on the...

New urine-based test looks at 18 genes and was specifically developed to pick out those cancers that need immediate treatment over the slow-growing type. Researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have developed a new urine-based test that addresses a major problem in prostate cancer: how to separate the slow-growing form of the disease unlikely to cause harm from more aggressive cancer that needs immediate treatment. The test, called MyProstateScore2.0, or MPS2, looks at 18 different genes linked to high-grade prostate cancer. In multiple tests using urine and tissue samples from men with prostate cancer, it successfully identified...

The largest study to date investigating a single invitation to a PSA blood test to screen for prostate cancer has found it had a small impact on reducing deaths, but also led to overdiagnosis and missed early detection of some aggressive cancers. The CAP trial, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and carried out by researchers from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge, involved over 400,000 men aged 50-69. Just under half received a single invitation for a PSA test as part of the trial. After following up for 15 years, there was a small...

MRI of the prostate, combined with a blood test, can help determine if a prostate lesion is clinically significant cancer, research suggests A new meta-analysis suggests doctors and patients can avoid unnecessary prostate biopsies by combining MRI of the prostate findings with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) density. To doctors, clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) is prostate cancer that has a high chance of threatening a patient's life. MRI of the prostate can provide some of this information. Still, a biopsy is traditionally needed to determine how aggressive the cancer cells look. This study tested a new approach: combining MRI-based prostate imaging...

King Charles has been diagnosed with a form of cancer, says Buckingham Palace. It is not prostate cancer, but was discovered during his recent treatment for an enlarged prostate. The type of cancer has not been revealed, but according to a palace statement the King began "regular treatments" on Monday. Buckingham Palace says the King "remains wholly positive about his treatment and looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible".

A team of researchers have found a new therapeutic strategy for patients with a specific subtype of metastatic prostate cancer resistant to standard chemotherapy treatment with docetaxel. In this study, they propose a new treatment based on a combination of kinase inhibitors in patients who inevitably stop responding to docetaxel. The team found that resistance to this drug is associated with the hyperactivation of the cellular pathways PI3K/AKT and MEK/ERK and have explored the possibility of inhibiting these pathways as a new therapeutic strategy in patients who maintain the function of PTEN, a negative regulatory protein of the PI3K/AKT pathway....

Combining testosterone-blocking drugs in patients with prostate cancer relapse prevents the spread of cancer better than treatment with a single drug, a multi-institution, Phase 3 clinical trial led by researchers has found. The approach can extend the time between debilitating drug treatments without prolonging the time it takes to recover from each treatment. Prostate cancer is usually treated with one of several testosterone-lowering drugs for a set period of time. "This adds to a growing body of evidence in favor of more intensive testosterone-blocking therapy in patients with higher-risk prostate cancer," said Rahul Aggarwal, MD. The new study focused on...

Researchers have identified a receptor protein known as CHRM1 as a key player in prostate cancer cells' resistance to docetaxel, a commonly-used chemotherapy drug to treat advanced cancer that has spread beyond the prostate. The discovery opens the door to new treatment strategies that could overcome this resistance. The study showed that blocking CHRM1 in resistant prostate cancer cell lines and an animal model based on patient-derived resistant tissue restored docetaxel's ability to kill cells and stop tumor growth. The researchers did this by using dicyclomine, a drug that selectively inhibits CHRM1 activity. Dicyclomine is already on the market as...

The Today Show suffered an awkward blunder on Monday as it's closed captions said King Charles was set to undergo 'prostitute surgery'. The highly-watched US morning show, which airs on NBC, was reporting on the king's recent surgery for an enlarged prostate. But instead of reporting about the medical procedure, the caption read the king was to have 'prostitute surgery'. The blunder was spotted by Below Deck and the Traitors US star Kate Chastain who uploaded it to Instagram and joked 'I bet AI is in charge of closed captions for the Today Show'. Last week the royal was diagnosed...

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was recently diagnosed and is being treated for prostate cancer. He is one of the nearly 290,000 American men who will be diagnosed with the condition this year. Nearly all types of cancer have become less deadly over the last 30 years, with one notable exception: advanced-stage prostate cancer, according to a recent report from the American Cancer Society (ACS). “We have had more men diagnosed with more advanced prostate cancer over the last decade,” Dr. Sam S. Chang, the Chief Surgical Officer at the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, told The Epoch Times in an...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December and underwent a minimally invasive procedure to treat and cure it, according to a statement from Walter Reed National Military Center officials on Tuesday. "Secretary Austin recovered uneventfully from his surgery and returned home the next morning. [snipped out section quoting officials saying his prognosis is excellent] Austin was then admitted to Walter Reed on Jan. 1 "with complications from the December 22 procedure, including nausea with severe abdominal, hip, and leg pain," the officials said.