Survival rates for men with metastatic prostate cancer have increased by a median of six months, something which coincides with the gradual introduction of ‘dual treatment’ since 2016. That is in keeping with a register study of all Swedish men diagnosed between 2008 and 2020. The outcomes are published within the medical journal JAMA Network Open.

Dual treatment signifies that patients receive each standard hormone therapy (GnRH therapy) and chemotherapy or androgen receptor blockers. Research has previously shown that men receiving this treatment live roughly one 12 months longer than those receiving GnRH treatment alone.

Dual treatment for men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer was regularly introduced in Sweden after the outcomes of the randomized trials got here in, and dual treatment is now beneficial within the national care program for prostate cancer. We desired to see if the change in treatment of those patients was followed by increased survival.”

Marcus Westerberg from the Department of Surgical Sciences at Uppsala University, one in every of the researchers behind the study

Researchers from Uppsala University and San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy, used the National Prostate Cancer Register (NPCR) to review all men diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in Sweden between 2008 and 2020.

The outcomes showed that in 2016 only one% of men at this stage received dual therapy, while 40% received it in 2020. The most important increase was amongst men aged under 65 and the smallest increase amongst men over 80.

The common survival rate amongst these men increased from 2.7 between 2008 and 2012 to three.2 years in 2017-2020; corresponding to a rise of about six months. The largest increase in survival was amongst men under 80. Within the evaluation, the researchers also took under consideration age and other diseases.

“Although care needs to be taken when interpreting our results, we found a transparent temporal association between the introduction of dual treatment and improved survival rates. The study suggests that treatments which were successful in randomized trials are also successful on the population level when introduced into routine care,” Westerberg concludes.

The research is funded by the Swedish Cancer Society and Region Uppsala.