Jun 23, 2008 6:25 am US/Eastern
Health Watch: Preventing Prostate Cancer
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
The drug finasteride, called proscar, is FDA-approved to shrink benign enlarged prostate glands. But it was recently found to be able to lower the risk of developing prostate cancer.
"The data now shows you're almost one-third less likely to develop prostate cancer in your lifetime if you take this drug than if you don't. It's a very powerful result. Finasteride not only reduces the chances that you'll get a more innocent form of prostate cancer but actually reduces the chances that you'll get an aggressive cancer also," said Dr. Peter Scardino from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Jack David Marcus is a 12-year prostate cancer survivor, or as he prefers to call it, a cancer fighter, because even successful treatment takes a toll.
"Some of the approaches, the treatment methodologies, have terrible adverse side effects, whether it be surgery or radiation that deal with sexual potency or deal with urinary dysfunction," Jack David said.
Dr. Scardino was orginally very skeptical of finasteride's value as a cancer preventative because the first study that showed a benefit, also revealed what seemed to be a major drawback.
"Some of those men who did develop prostate cancer, developed a particularly aggressive form of cancer and we were worried at the time that here was a drug that might prevent the kind of cancer you're not going to die of but might even promote the kind that you are," Dr. Scardino said.
But when researchers corrected for the prostate shrinkage that finasteride causes, they found that the drug reduced prostate cancer incidence in both slow growing and aggressive cancers.
"Many more men will be taking this drug and I think we'll see a reduction in prostate cancer incidents over the next ten years," Dr. Scardino said.
"Yes prevention is better. Avoiding cancer is better if one is able," Jack David said.
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