Consider Taking Drug To Prevent Prostate cancer

For the first time, leading medical groups are advising millions of healthy men to consider taking a drug to prevent prostate cancer if they regularly get tested for signs of the disease. The advice stops short of saying men should take the drug finasteride, sold in generic form and as Proscar. It has risks and benefits each man must weigh, they say. That’s bound to be confusing, doctors admit. The drug can cut the odds of being diagnosed with prostate cancer by about 25 percent. Earlier worries that it might spur aggressive tumors have largely faded with further study, making doctors more willing to recommend it now. “If a man is interested enough in being screened, then at least he ought to have the benefits of a discussion” about taking the drug, said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Institutes of Health scientist and one of the authors of the new guidelines. They were published in two medical journals and discussed in a news briefing Tuesday in connection with a cancer conference in Florida. They were written by doctors with American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Urological Association.

Cost could be a big issue for many men. Finasteride, which must be taken daily, costs $2 to $3 a pill and insurers may not cover it for cancer prevention. Also, to prevent a single additional case of cancer, 71 men would have to take the drug for seven years — another reason this is an individual decision, doctors say. “There probably would be millions of different attitudes about taking a pill a day to prevent a condition that may or may not occur,” said the University of Michigan’s Dr. Howard Sandler. About 186,000 American men this year will be told they have cancer of the prostate. The disease often is diagnosed from a biopsy after a suspicious PSA blood test, which measures a protein. PSA can be high for many reasons, and there’s no proof that screening saves lives — the reason no major cancer groups recommend it. Most men over 55 get the test anyway, then face a dilemma if cancer is found. It usually grows so slowly it is not life-threatening, but it can prove fatal.

Treatments often cause sexual or bladder control problems. “We still don’t know if screening and aggressive treatment is a good thing,” but if men are getting PSA tests, taking finasteride is reasonable, said the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer, Dr. Otis Brawley. Finasteride shrinks the prostate and curbs testosterone, a hormone that helps cancer grow. The drug already is used for urinary problems from prostate enlargement as men age. At a lower dose, it’s sold as the baldness drug Propecia. A similar drug, dutasteride, sold as Avodart, is being tested to see if it, too, prevents prostate cancer. The guideline covers the whole class of drugs but for now, doctors are focused on finasteride. That’s because it’s the only one shown to prevent cancer so far. A landmark study in 2003 found fewer men who took it got prostate cancer than those on dummy pills. However, that study also raised a concern: Those on the drug who did get cancer seemed to have more aggressive tumors.

More study found that that wasn’t the case. It was just that the tumors were more easy to detect among men taking the drug because it helped reduce prostate size. The new advice to consider finasteride “is long overdue,” said Dr. Eric Klein, prostate cancer chief at the Cleveland Clinic. When men are given a full picture of the drug’s effects, “it’s not a tough sell,” he said. Finasteride has been linked to lower sexual desire and difficulty having an erection. However, in a study of older men, those were problems for most who weren’t taking the drug as well. Finasteride also gave benefits: fewer urinary problems and less incontinence. “The overall quality of life was identical,” and most side effects go away after a few weeks of use, Kramer said. Three of the 15 guideline writers have consulted for Merck & Co., which makes Proscar, or GlaxoSmithKline PLC, which makes Avodart. The advice is “aimed at people like me 10 years ago,” said Stewart Justman, a 60-year-old literature professor at University of Montana. He is in his third battle with prostate cancer and he represented patients on the guidelines panel.