Hormone therapy rates no different than ‘watchful waiting’ in prostate cancer

A lot of doctors give androgen deprivation therapy without any evidence that it’s a good thing for early-stage prostate cancer. One of the reasons we’re in such a quagmire on prostate cancer is so many doctors have practiced medicine not supporting the clinical trials but just treating it the way they think they ought to be treating it.

A recent study suggests thatthis increasingly common therapy used for localized prostate cancer may not bestow any survival benefits on the patient beyond those seen with a simple “wait-and-see” approach.

Men taking androgen deprivation therapy, which shuts off male hormones that can promote tumor growth, even had a slightly lower prostate cancer-specific survival rate.