ORLANDO—Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for localized prostate cancer may increase the risk of death from heart disease in men aged 65 years and older, according to researchers.
A team led by Henry Tsai, MD, a resident physician in the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program in Boston, studied 3,636 men (median age, 64 years) with localized prostate tumors. Of these, 735 received ADT (median duration, 4.1 months) and 2,901 did not. The median follow-up was four years.
Twenty-seven men (median age, 68 years) died from cardiac causes. Each month of ADT was associated with a 10% increased risk of cardiac mortality after controlling for other cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, BMI, and smoking. The increase in cardiac mortality associated with ADT remained significant in the older group but not the younger group, the investigators reported here at the third annual Prostate Cancer Symposium. The estimated five-year cumulative incidence of cardiac death in the older men was 3% among those treated with ADT and 0.9% among men who were not treated.
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