medwireNews: Men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who are beginning treatment with abiraterone acetate plus prednisone may not need luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) therapy, suggest exploratory findings presented at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich, Germany.
Since abiraterone suppresses serum testosterone levels, Carsten Ohlmann (Malteser Hospital Bonn/Rhein-Sieg, Germany) and co-investigators of the phase II SPARE trial hypothesized that LHRH therapy could be withheld in this setting.
And indeed, foregoing LHRH therapy did not appear to adversely affect outcomes for the 33 patients with asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic disease who were randomly assigned to receive abiraterone acetate plus prednisone. The rate of radiographic progression-free survival at 12 months was “high,” at 78%, and the median time to prostate-specific antigen progression was prolonged, at 336 days, the researchers reported in a poster.
The corresponding values for the 34 participants who additionally received LHRH therapy were 90% and 288 days.
Speaking to medwireNews, Ohlmann said that the next step would be to go onto a phase III trial to obtain a high level of evidence that abiraterone is effective even in the absence of LHRH therapy.
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