Experts are expressing concern that commonly used procedures for treating prostate cancer may be responsible for a deadly side effect: the formation of a potentially life threatening blood clot. A Swedish study found that those men who received hormone treatment were more at risk of developing blood clots.
It is thought that hormone therapy is linked to testosterone which is what is seen to elevate the risk of developing blood clots. Whereas the regular risk of a man developing a blood clot is about 1 in a thousand, that risk was seen to quadruple to 4 in a thousand for those on hormones.
The fact, however is that there is no real alternative to hormone therapy in the case of prostate cancer; since this is a treatment that is offered in the case of advanced cancers.
In fact, it is recently being seen that hormone therapy could also work in those extreme cases where the cancer is resistant even to surgical removal of testicles.
A new hormone treatment for castration-resistant prostate cancer is being tested which is being called MDV3100, has gone through the first two phases of testing and is awaiting approval for the third.
Source: abc7chicago
