Drug cuts prostate cancer diagnosis risk in high-risk men

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have shown a drug already prescribed to shrink benign, enlarged prostates to reduce the risk of a prostate cancer diagnosis by 23% in men with an increased risk of the disease.

The four-year study has been reported April 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study, researchers found that dutasteride (Avodart) significantly reduced the chances that men would be diagnosed with the tumors that are most often treated excessively, those that fall in the mid-range of aggressiveness. These tumors, which account for the majority of all prostate cancers, grow unpredictably. This uncertainty leads many men to opt for surgery or radiation therapy - treatments that can lead to incontinence and impotence.

"Dutasteride may potentially offer many thousands of men a way to reduce their risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer," says the study's lead author Gerald Andriole, MD, chief of urologic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. "This means more men could avoid unnecessary treatment for prostate cancer along with the costs and harmful side effects that can occur with treatment."