HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Oct. 13, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The risk of dementia might be doubled for prostate cancer patients who are treated with testosterone-lowering drugs, a new study suggests.
Men who underwent androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) had close to an 8 percent risk of developing dementia within five years of treatment, compared with a 3.5 percent risk for prostate cancer patients who didn’t receive the therapy, researchers discovered.
“People who got ADT in our study had twice the risk of developing dementia, compared to people who didn’t,” said lead researcher Dr. Kevin Nead. He is a radiation oncology resident at the University of Pennsylvania who conducted the research while at Stanford University in California.
But, the study only found an association between ADT and dementia risk, not cause and effect. And men undergoing androgen therapy shouldn’t stop the treatment based on these findings, the researchers said, because more studies are needed to verify this potential link.
Testosterone can promote the growth of prostate cancer, so one treatment option involves using drugs to reduce blood levels of male hormones, or androgens, the study authors explained in background information.
Even so, there’s a good chance your doctor will pursue a course of “watchful waiting” rather than androgen-deprivation therapy, surgery or some other treatment, the researchers noted.
The number of low-risk patients who didn’t undergo any treatment jumped from 7 percent in 1990-2009 to 40 percent in 2010-2013, according to a 2015 study. That increase has been linked to research that has questioned the predictive value of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test in prostate cancer patients.
Androgen-deprivation therapy has been around since the 1940s, and its use has increased in recent decades, the researchers added. About 500,000 men receive the therapy for prostate cancer in the United States, and about half of all prostate cancer patients in industrialized nations will undergo it during their lifetime.
Unfortunately, evidence is mounting that low testosterone levels may also have negative consequences for the brain, Nead said.
“There’s a lot of research on low testosterone and negative effects on cognitive [brain] health, and associations with specific types of dementia,” he said.
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