Current hormonal therapy for disseminated prostate cancer

Abstract

Prostate cancer (PC) is one of the most common malignancies in males. Hormonal therapy (HT) is the method of choice in treating disseminated PC. LHRH agonists are used for therapy of disseminated and metastatic PC; a number of studies have shown the advantages of adjuvant and neoadjuvant HT for its locally advanced process over radiotherapy (RT) alone and radical prostatectomy (RPE). Diferelin (tryptorelin) that has been used for over 20 years is one of the most studied LHRH agonists. The efficiency of HT with diferelin is comparable with that of bilateral orchiectomy, the quality of life being much higher in the patients receiving this drug. The efficiency of intermittent diferelin HT is shown to be the same as that of continuous HT, by considerably improving the quality of life. Diferelin may be used for evaluation of the hormonal sensitivity of a tumor and for choice of an efficient treatment policy. Comparison of diferelin with other LHRH agonists has yielded comparable results in the trend of prostate-specific antigen levels and testosterone concentrations to decrease.