Two birds with one stone…….

British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC said, Thursday 19th June, the Food and Drug Administration approved its enlarged prostate drug Avodart for use in combination with Flomax, which is made by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Astellas Pharma Inc.

While Flomax is also approved to treat enlarged prostate, also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia, a two-year study showed that taking the two drugs together worked more effectively than either of the drugs alone.

Avodart works by shrinking the prostate, while Flomax helps controls symptoms, such as frequent urination.

Enlarged prostate affects half of men over 50 and 90 percent of men over 80. If left untreated, enlarged prostate can lead to hospitalization for the inability to urinate or prostate surgery.

"The combination of Avodart and tamsulosin at diagnosis allows doctors to simultaneously treat the patient's prostate on two fronts by reducing prostate size and rapidly improving symptoms," said Steven A. Kaplan, M.D., from Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. (PD)

Surgical and Drug Castration

not the Answer.

Surgical castration or using drugs such as Zolodex or Casadex to supress the majority of the bodies testosterone production is only a short term solution to combating prostate cancer.

The fact that prostate cancer cells begin to grow again after a period of time surpressed by these methods has long been known but the reason has not.

Now Dr. Elahe Mostaghel, a clinical-research associate in Peter Nelson's laboratory at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre has found that prostate tumours are themselves able to maintain significant levels of testosterone, which fuels the growth of the cancer.

According to the researchers, the study showed testosterone levels to be four times higher in metastatic tumours from castrate men (collected immediately after death via rapid autopsy) than in benign and cancerous prostate tissue in men with normal circulating androgen levels (collected at the time of prostate surgery).

Whilst this may in time lead to treatments to counter this no mention was made of the fact that quercetin has a role in this prostate disease right now.

Dr Patrick Quillan of Cancer Treatment Centres of America assembled some interesting data on Quercetin in relation to cancer.

Quercetin has the potential to revert a cancerous cell back to a normal healthy cell.

Quercetin induces apoptosis or programmed cell death in otherwise ‘immortal’ cancer cells.

Quercetin inhibits inflammation by reducing histamine release and reduces tumour cell-proliferation.

Check out point two above.  Quercetin induces apoptosis (death) in otherwise immortal cells.  In other words it can kill prostate cells which have become immune to the lack of testosterone.  Well worth a try I think, check out this site for a quality product.  http://www.prostatehelp.me.uk/39.html

Some prostate cancers linked to estrogen

Some years ago Roger Mason published a book ‘Testosterone is Your Friend’ in which he proclaimed that you should ensure that your testerone level is high and not allow it to drop below a normal level which occurs as men age.  Strange that now we find that researchers have found that estrogen is a ‘key player’ in half of all prostate cancers.

So while medics, be they general practitioners or consultants, pumped their prostate cancer patients with testosterone inhibitors to cut off the supply to the growing prostate cancer it appears they are producing by their action the very thing that is now claimed is a cause of some aggressive prostate cancer – estrogen dominance.

I have stated many times that if testosterone is the reason for prostate cancer, then young men in the prime of life with testosterone flooding their system should have prostate cancer by the bucket.  Yet it doesn’t happen.  No, when men get prostate cancer is when their testosterone levels decrease as they age.  At this time estrogen becomes dominent in many male bodies.  It seems that Roger had a point.  The following press release explains.

‘New York scientists have pinpointed the hormone estrogen as a key player in about half of all prostate cancers.

More than 450 prostate cancer samples provided information on more than 6,000 genes that implicated estrogen -- known as a "female hormone" but also produced by men -- as part of a molecular pathway that results in the fusion of two genes promoting prostate cancer growth.’

Researchers believe such cancers are a more aggressive form of prostate cancer. Based on the new data, it is  believed that inhibiting estrogen may be one way of controlling such cancers.

No thought then of ensuring that the patients hormone levels should be brought into balance. For instance, by increasing testosterone level so that it is as high as it was in the prime of life, thus negating any effect the unbalanced estrogen may have.  No we have to find away, (with drugs ?), to inhibit the estrogen. (PD)