Re-purposing blood-pressure medications could reduce prostate cancer recurrence rate
GenesisCare has collaborated with Griffith University, Gold Coast, on a new study which found some alpha blockers (blood pressure medication) may be able to significantly reduce the risk of prostate cancer recurrence and delay the time to chemical relapse.
The Griffith University study, published in the Nature published journal, Scientific Reports, was led by Associate Professor Shai Dukie from the School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, GenesisCare Radiation Oncologist, Professor David Christie, Briohny Spencer and Jordan Hart.
The team analysed data from several thousand patients with adenocarcinoma of the prostate who received radiotherapy at GenesisCare Tugun between 2000 and 2017.
Patient groups included a control group and men receiving tamsulosin and prazosin at the time of radiotherapy.
The study found that prazosin significantly reduced the number of patients who experienced biochemical relapse at both the two and five-year points when compared to the control and tamsulosin groups. In contrast, another alpha blocker, tamsulosin was found to have no significant effect on both two and five-year relapse rates or recurrence free survival.
“Our research showed that the alpha blocker prazosin, at clinically relevant doses is able to significantly reduce the risk of prostate cancer recurrence as well as delay time to biochemical relapse in prostate cancer patients following radiotherapy,’’ Associate Professor Dukie said.
“The study showed that prazosin patients have a 3.9 times lower relative risk of biochemical relapse when compared to the control group,’’ Associate Professor Dukie said.
“Interpretation of the risk difference indicated 257 fewer prostate cancer cases would have developed per 1000 treated men, in this case 38 additional cases of cancer recurrence could have been expected had the patients not received prazosin.”
GenesisCare Radiation Oncologist Professor David Christie said, “While most forms of prostate cancer are extremely treatable with a five-year survival rate of 95%, between 20-50% of patients will experience biochemical relapse within 10 years of their treatment.”
“As a radiation oncologist my number one priority is to minimise the chances of reoccurrence for my patients and improve their overall quality of life so this study is fantastic news and I look forward to further research in this area.”
“There is an urgent need to identify effective primary or adjunct treatment options and alpha blockers may represent one of these options,’’ Associate Professor Dukie said.
“The added advantage of these agents is that they have been used clinically for many years so we have good safety data on them.”
“The next step in our research is a clinical trial which we hope to start soon with one of our graduates and clinical trial pharmacist (Liam King), leading as part of his PhD at Griffith.”
Prostate cancer is the fourth most prevalent cancer worldwide and the most common solid tumour among males. In Australia, an estimated 17,729 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed each year and it is the second leading cause of cancer related death among Australian men.
Approximately 80% of new diagnoses are clinically localised with a five-year survival rate of approximately 95%, however, the cancer will eventually transition to castrate resistant disease. Following this transition, the disease is ultimately incurable with a median survival of 14 months.
Associate Professor Dukie and Professor David Christie recently shared the findings of the study with 9 News Gold Coast. You can watch the story here.
