CHICAGO — A cheap, decades-old chemotherapy drug extended life by more than a year when added to standard hormone therapy for men whose prostate cancer has widely spread, doctors reported Sunday.
Men who received docetaxel, sold as Taxotere and in generic form, lived nearly 58 months versus 44 months for those not given the drug, a major study found.
“This is one of the biggest improvements we’ve seen in survival in adults” with any type of cancer that has widely spread from its original site, said Dr. Christopher Sweeney of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He led the study and shared the results Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual conference in Chicago.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. In the United States, about 240,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. About 30,000 annually are like the men in this study, with disease that has spread to bones or other organs.In the study, all 790 men received drugs to block testosterone, a hormone that fuels prostate cancer’s growth, and half also were given six infusions of docetaxel, one every three weeks.