Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Was the study paid for by the Pomegranite producers? Seriously, there's no hard science proving that any nutritional supplements can prevent or cure prostate cancer. I tried Saw Palmetto and Lukeine's (tomato extracts) for 7 years before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Those were the big ideas back in the nineties. Tahitian Noni juice came along later as the prevent anything, cure anything natural elixir which never proved out except by those selling and promoting it.
However thats not to say that sensible use of nutritional supplements won't support good health, energy and the immune system. Of course they do when used judiciously. Much as we'd like it, cancer isn't prevented, cured or effectively treated with vitamins, herbals or supplements despite the claims of their manufacturers and promoters. Anecdotal testimonials are no substitute for good science.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
This study didn't say it was a cure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the UCLA study was done for men who already had prostate cancer and had a rise in PSA levels after treatment. What it showed was that Pomegranate juice significantly slowed the rise in PSA levels over those no taking the juice. So supposedly the juice slowed the growth of cancer cells quite a bit.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Perhaps it slowed the rise a bit. But was the slowdown clinically significant as compared with Hormone Blockade which stops it dead in its tracks for the many years before it becomes hormone refractory? With recurrance of prostate cancer after primary treatment the goal is to eradicate as much of the recurring cancer as possible as quickly as possible with either local radiation following surgery and/or hormone blockade. I suspect the effect of the Pomegranate Juice may be too mild to qualify as first line therapy, although it certainly can't hurt.
Pomegranate extract is currently considered an excellant and potent anti-oxidant which supports the immune system and helps ward off infections and inflammatory conditions. I use it myself as part of my health maintenance regimen. However I'd never rely on any of the many supplements I use as primary treatment for any acute or serious illness.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Thank you shs50 for taking the time to comment on this study. You are absolutely right in your assessment.
This study was "conducted at the University of California in Los Angeles and published in the July 1st, 2006 edition of Clinical Cancer Research. It should be noted that funding for this study was provided by a company that produces Pomegranate juice."
This study was "funded by the owners of POM Wonderful Co., the maker of the pomegranate juice used in the study."
Good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle is very important for everyone, at any age. Beyond that, if a magic pill that slowed or stopped cancer really did exist, it would be a headline on page one of every newspaper in the world. And the finder or discoverer would be richer than Bill Gates. I really beleive that in the not so distant future, the medical world will find a cure for virtually all disease.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
I believe one of the problems we have is that none of the natural supplements can be patented. Therefore there are no companies out there willing to sponsor a placebo controlled, double blind study using 5,000 subjects. Many times there is a lot of science and smaller studies that support the killing of cancer cells but they are not large enough to attract worldwide attention. The alternative is to believe some of the claims coming from large drug companies that have billions at stake. Some of the drugs have been found to extend life a few months but the side effects are debilitating. My choice has been to stick with the natural supplements and not suffer the side effects. I'm hoping the pomegranite concentrate I use (highly concentrated powder with 70% ellagic acid) will slow things down and reverse the PSA trend -- dale
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
04chris,
I think that if some common natural supplements could cure cancer then it would be common knowledge. Some supplements may be good for prostate health but it is basically a genetic predisposition or defect which causes you to develop prostate cancer not diet. People who have treatable prostate cancer should not take supplements or drugs as it will give you a false sense of security. The PSA is down but the cancer isn't. That's why when you see an ad on TV for Avodart they include a disclaimer at the end of the commercial to the effect that "you should see your doctor as you symptoms may be due to a more serious condition such as prostate cancer. My urologist at Loma Linda was horrified when she read that my urologist in Canada was giving Avodart to me after a prostate cancer diagnosis. All that may happen is that you will delay treatment until it is too late. If you can get treated, do it.
Bob
The Following User Says Thank You to harpman For This Useful Post: 04chris (03-10-2011)
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi Bob,
I agree that there is certainly a large genetic predisposition to prostate cancer. Yet, many men with family histories rife with prostate cancer never get the disease, and many men with no family history of PC, like myself, do get the disease. This is the epigenetic (environmental) component. Both play a role.
Whether common foods or supplements can reduce risk may not be common knowledge because of the costs of PC research. Typically researchers have to track treatments over a very long time period for PC. This is time-consuming and expensive. Who would pay for it? Most research on supplements is relegated to lab studies, retrospective analyses or very small pilot studies. There have been exceptions, like the SELECT trial on Vitamin E and Selenium, but those are few and far between, unfortunately.
The 5-α-reductase inhibitors, finasteride (Proscar) and dutasteride (Avodart), have been well-studied, however.
The Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) was a randomized, double-blind controlled trial among 18,882 men concluded that Finasteride significantly reduced the PCa risk relative to placebo across multiple Gleason scores (4 through 7), including a 58% reduction in Gleason score 5 PCa risk, a 52% reduction in Gleason score 6 PCa risk , and a 22% reduction in Gleason score 7 PCa risk. Finasteride had no significant effect on the risk of Gleason score 2, 3, or 8-10 cancer.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19328538
The REDUCE trial, a multi-center, 5-year placebo-controlled, parallel group study among 6729 men who subsequently had a biopsy, found that Dutasteride (Avodart) reduced the risk of PC by 22.8%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20357281 (free full text available)
The authors also concluded that dutasteride actually improved the detection of prostate cancer and did not mask it. PSA increase was a better indicator of cancer in men who received dutasteride vs placebo. Conversely, the initial decrease in PSA in men taking dutasteride did not predict the likelihood of prostate cancer. In other words, because 5-α-reductase inhibitors reduces PSA coming from BPH, any subsequent rise in PSA is a red flag for cancer. Also, by reducing the size of the prostate, they improve the chances of detecting any cancer with a biopsy, and improve the ability of radiation to cure PC.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21074214
IMHO 5-α-reductase inhibitors should be routinely prescribed for men with moderately high (4-10) or rising PSA levels. They may potentially save many men needless biopsies and treatments.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Tall Allen
My worry is that men who have already been diagnosed with prostate cancer especially younger men will put off treatment because they are taking something that reduces their PSA. I drank a lot of pomegranate juice in my time and my urologist told me he had patients that were drinking so much pomegranate juice there anus's were blistered.
As for hormone treatments before surgery and radiation Dr. Critz told me that there was no statistical evidence that this increased life span and just unnecessarily subjected men to the side effects of hormones. I know that on the surface it makes sense that a smaller prostate would be easier to treat surgically as it is a difficult surgery tucked under the pubic bone and that a smaller area could be targeted using radiation.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi Thanks for letting us know for the sake of our husbands. It is difficult to know sometimes even with food because of varying ploys but I guess we could use a few extra fresh pomegranites since that is the way they come from the tree. The boiled juice might of course have some of the enzyme destroyed by heat. It is said vitamin C which is an anti-inflammatory is destroyed to an extent by heat and who knows what all other anti-inflammatories are destroyed by processing. This would of course be true for almost any other canned or bottled juice.
Last edited by sjb; 03-10-2011 at 11:59 AM.
Reason: Addition
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi Bob,
Ouch! (and LOL)@blistered anuses
I agree that it is SO important that Active Surveillance be really active and not just an excuse to be in denial.
It's always problematic to use increased lifespan as a measure of effectiveness of any treatment for PC. As you know, PC is very slow-growing in its early stages, and it may be twenty or more years until a PC cause-specific death is reached, and often something else will be the cause of death first. Very few studies track that long. Freedom from biochemical failure is a much better measure of the effectiveness of any treatment for PC.
It was this error in using increase in lifespan as an endpoint that led the US government to recommend against PSA testing as a subsidized test, the way mammograms are for breast cancer. The evidence they relied upon were studies in the US and Europe that showed no significant increase in expected lifespan from PSA testing. If they had used instead something like the decreased incidence of metastatic disease or the decrease in lifetime treatment costs, the cost-benefit analysis of PSA testing would have been a lot more favorable.
Neoadjuvant hormone treatment is usually reserved for intermediate or advanced cases. It has improved outcomes in such cases, measured by freedom from biochemical recurrence, in many clinical trials. It doesn't seem to be useful in localized early-stage disease. Here is a good review of those clinical trials:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949366/?tool=pubmed
It is also used among those whose prostates are too large for effective brachytherapy, where it is well-known to reduce prostate size and improve outcomes:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10606479
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
CONCERN WITH NO PATENTS FOR SUPPLEMENTS, AFFECTING TRIALS MOTIVATION FOR COMPANIES
Hi dale,
I have followed the pomegranate research closely and can address some of your concerns. I've read the responses to date - quite an active thread, so I've put a title at the top so I can respond to each concern in the different posts. (Thanks to Allen for his responses that have covered some key ground already.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by 04chris
I believe one of the problems we have is that none of the natural supplements can be patented. Therefore there are no companies out there willing to sponsor a placebo controlled, double blind study using 5,000 subjects.
That's true. The UCLA pomegranate study was small - fewer than 100 men, yet it cost POM Wonderful millions. I've heard they have spent $34,000,000 on research supporting their products. That ain't chicken feed, and they have no exclusivity through patents, as you have pointed out.
Quote:
Many times there is a lot of science and smaller studies that support the killing of cancer cells but they are not large enough to attract worldwide attention.
Fortunately, this is not the case with pomegranate research. Though the UCLA trial was small, the team was highly respected and the success measure, change in PSA doubling time, was highly measurable and objective. Fortunately, a recently announced trial led by a highly respected team from Johns Hopkins came to a similar conclusion. Moreover, lab research involving microarrays of genes known to play positive and negative roles in prostate cancer versus elements of pomegranate (rind, seeds, juice, you name it) offered strongly corroberative support. Believe me, pomegranate research is getting a lot of attention.
Quote:
The alternative is to believe some of the claims coming from large drug companies that have billions at stake. Some of the drugs have been found to extend life a few months but the side effects are debilitating.
It is very important that cancer patients appreciate what these results really mean to them that show "just" a few months of benefit. Typically, such trials are run with patients in terrible shape, with very advanced disease and short life-expectancies. Typically a proportion of the patients don't respond at all, while others have fairly vigorous responses. What's reported, unfortunately, is just the average. You often notice a much longer response if you eliminate the non-responders and focus just on the responders. For example, my main therapy has been triple hormonal blockade, and it is working very well for me in my twelfth year despite a very aggressive case. However, the initial trial of combined hormonal therapy (two drug, not three), showed an advantage of just a few months. Also fortunately, medical oncologists can most often spot non-responders quickly and switch to other approaches, dropping the useless approach. A lot of research is focused on figuring out who will respond to which therapies.
Quote:
My choice has been to stick with the natural supplements and not suffer the side effects. I'm hoping the pomegranite concentrate I use (highly concentrated powder with 70% ellagic acid) will slow things down and reverse the PSA trend -- dale
I've probably replied with this before to you, but I think you may be successful with your total program to combat your recurrence after your RP. By the way, the UCLA group followed their first trial with an extension for men who stayed with the program and in the trial. The PSA doubling time for the entire group was about 15 months at the start of the first trial and about 54 months after two years; for the subset who continued with the juice, their doubling time grew to 88 months. As I've probably mentioned to you before, a number of men had PSA doubling times that could not be calculated because their PSA levels actually dropped!
All that said, it might help to consult a real expert, and keep monitoring carefully.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Jim,
Great info! In one of your posts you mentioned some follow-on, well controlled trials using juice. I too wonder how they will duplicate the flavor. (Capsules or powder would seem to be a better choice). I'm still taking two tablespoons of pomegranite rind powder mixed in water -- I'm sure a maggot would have trouble keeping it down. I believe I'd mentioned that the 70% ellagic content also contains a bunch of the other beneficial components (according to the manufacturer). I hope to have an appointment with an oncologist at Loma Linda next week.
Thanks again
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi Bob,
I'm replying to your earlier response to 04chris (dale) about supplements, in which you stated, in part:
[QUOTE=harpman;4703008]04chris,
I think that if some common natural supplements could cure cancer then it would be common knowledge."
How I wish, but that is not at all the way it works! Unfortunately, there are many bogus claims on the one hand, with greedy hucksters trying to foist unreliable claims and products on the public, and stubborn doctors and medical "authorities" on the other, unwilling to recognize the merits of legitimate nutritional items and supplements. It can be hard for the layman and even those with medical knowledge to separate fact from fiction.
Fortunately, disciplined research helps answer these questions, or at least, more often the case, gives us key clues to help us place our bets. The pomegranate research discussed on this board for some time is one example of convincing research. Research on selenium for prostate cancer is an example indicating that the biological mechanism is probably fairly complicated; it now appears, thanks to the Kantoff team's research, that genetic differences govern who will benefit a lot and who will not benefit. One of the doctors who has studied nutrition and prostate cancer with care is Dr. Charles "Snuffy" Myers, MD, once a leading pharmacologist at the US National Institutes of Health, and now a medical oncologist specializing in prostate cancer. He has written a short book to help us layman sort through hype and research; it's entitled "Flaxseed oil: panacea or poison". You might want to take a look at it.
Part of the problem is that none of these supplements or nutritional elements appears sufficient by itself to cure or halt the advance of prostate cancer in all of us. Would that our disease were like scurvy, the disease that was preventable with citrus fruit. For some of us, there probably is indefinitely long term control, while for others with very aggressive disease, a nutritional program may help very little.
Quote:
Some supplements may be good for prostate health but it is basically a genetic predisposition or defect which causes you to develop prostate cancer not diet.
I'm interested what is leading you to that conclusion, one that is not shared by most experts in the prostate cancer medical community. For instance, the "Asian paradox" is often cited as evidence suggesting that environment, probably with diet and nutrition in the forefront, appears to make a strong difference in the frequency of developing clinical prostate cancer. The paradox goes like this: while Asian men, for instance Japanese men who have been well studied, have a rather low incidence of prostate cancer when they live in Asia, years after emigrating to the United States, their incidence of prostate cancer approaches the level of those living in the US all their lives.
The cancer research community is very concerned with genetics, but it is also concerned with what is known as "epigenetics", in short, the environment surrounding the genes. The view is that genetics is like a light switch: in one position it favors cancer, and does not favor it in the other; the environment is like the flick of the switch one way or the other.
Quote:
People who have treatable prostate cancer should not take supplements or drugs as it will give you a false sense of security. The PSA is down but the cancer isn't.
Your statement about taking supplements is absolute. It is contrary to many recommendations from responsible authorities. Try to think of specific supplements that so affect PSA and evidence to support your statement. I think you will have a hard time coming up with specifics.
Quote:
That's why when you see an ad on TV for Avodart they include a disclaimer at the end of the commercial to the effect that "you should see your doctor as you symptoms may be due to a more serious condition such as prostate cancer.
Tall Allen already addressed your comment, I believe. Research has proven that the 5-alpha reductase inhibitor drugs, specifically finasteride (formerly Proscar) and Avodart, do reset the PSA to a level about half the level at the start. After that reset, research has proven that these drugs reduce the "noise" from non-cancer aspects of the PSA signal, making it more reliable, not less, as an indicator of prostate cancer, and do the same for the DRE exam.
Quote:
My urologist at Loma Linda was horrified when she read that my urologist in Canada was giving Avodart to me after a prostate cancer diagnosis. All that may happen is that you will delay treatment until it is too late. If you can get treated, do it.
Bob
Circumstances can make all the difference here. If a man has aggressive cancer and Avodart is the only treatment, that would concern me too. On the other hand, in some circumstances that would be a reasonable approach, provided it was coupled with appropriate monitoring and perhaps other therapy to enable a timely shift to another approach if needed. In the hands of a savvy expert, treatment would not be delayed until it was too late, based on research.
Try checking www.pubmed.gov, a site we can use on this board because it is Government sponsored, to check out the facts.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
SHORTSIGHTED RESEARCH LED TO FAULTY CONCLUSIONS REGARDING SCREENING
Hi Allen,
I'm posting to amplify the points you are making and cite an illustration from last weeks conference Innovative Minds in Prostate Cancer Today. You wrote in part, responding to Bob (Harpman):
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tall Allen
...It's always problematic to use increased lifespan as a measure of effectiveness of any treatment for PC. As you know, PC is very slow-growing in its early stages, and it may be twenty or more years until a PC cause-specific death is reached, and often something else will be the cause of death first. Very few studies track that long. Freedom from biochemical failure is a much better measure of the effectiveness of any treatment for PC.
It was this error in using increase in lifespan as an endpoint that led the US government to recommend against PSA testing as a subsidized test, the way mammograms are for breast cancer. The evidence they relied upon were studies in the US and Europe that showed no significant increase in expected lifespan from PSA testing. If they had used instead something like the decreased incidence of metastatic disease or the decrease in lifetime treatment costs, the cost-benefit analysis of PSA testing would have been a lot more favorable.
...
The egregious flaws in the US screening study (known as "PLCO") and the European study that were jointly published by the New England Journal of Medicine deeply upset me on their release. Even as a layman survivor without enrolled medical education I could spot serious problems, and I wrote a lengthy post about them, highlighting the gross, conclusion-invalidating problems. I soon found I was among of chorus of those with medical authority and expertise who were highlighting the same flaws. For anyone interested, that thread was entitled "Two new screening studies - crucial flaws in interpretation," initially posted on 3/9/2009.
In the US study the average (median) follow-up was just seven years. Now let's keep in mind that the participants in the study were healthy at the start - no prostate cancer. Therefore, it no doubt took several years to develop the disease for most. That means that follow-up after diagnosis was almost certainly less than five years. According to research information summarized in Table 173 of the US Statistical Abstract for 2009, five year survival for caucasian men with prostate cancer was 99.4%, and 95.9% for African American men, during the period from 1996 through 2004! Therefore, the researchers concluded that screening was unhelpful despite the clear fact that their follow-up period was too short to reveal an effect! Amazing!
Unfortunately, the ripples from these misleading studies are still spreading; at the IMPaCT conference a doctor who is considered fairly expert quoted the studies as if they were gospel. That prompted yours truly, attending as a surivor representative, to rise with a very pointed audience question, and another panel member thereupon pronounced the studies "weak" and described additional serious flaws (such as "contamination", but that's another story). It amazes me that intelligent doctors sometimes have such great difficulty in connecting the dots. Fortunately, good sense often prevails, as it did at the conference.
As we might have guessed, follow-up analyses, based on additional years for these trials, and in-depth analysis of sements of the European trial, are already showing more robust benefits of screening. Allen, your figure of 20 years was used by that panel member with sense as the likely minimum time to get valid results from such a screening study based on survival comparisons, assuming other flaws were minor, which, in these two studies, was unfortunately not the case.
Take care,
Jim
Last edited by IADT3since2000; 03-16-2011 at 07:11 PM.
Reason: Added brief text right after posting.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi sjb,
Thanks for posting here. Whew! You have been at this more intensely than I have!
I have a few thoughts to add to your earlier post, and I'll put them in green. You wrote, in part:
Quote:
Originally Posted by sjb
Hi Thanks for letting us know for the sake of our husbands. It is difficult to know sometimes even with food because of varying ploys but I guess we could use a few extra fresh pomegranites since that is the way they come from the tree.
I have tried to eat fresh pomegranates for years, and I bought more after the UCLA research was published. However, I find I just don't get around to taking the trouble to prepare them, though I like them a lot. Also, some of the gene microarray research indicates that the rind also contains elements that are likely beneficial against prostate cancer, and you dont' get them (at least I don't) when you eat a pomegranate. The encouraging research was done with juice (UCLA), plus micro array for pomegranate elements(UCLA, others), and an extract (Johns Hopkins), rather than the fruit itself.
Quote:
The boiled juice might of course have some of the enzyme destroyed by heat. It is said vitamin C which is an anti-inflammatory is destroyed to an extent by heat and who knows what all other anti-inflammatories are destroyed by processing. This would of course be true for almost any other canned or bottled juice.
I don't know how they process the juice, but I doubt that the companies offering high quality pomegranate juice expose the juice to heat. Heat is known to weaken what are thought to be beneficial elements of the juice. In fact, the POM Wonderful company has its juice stored in cooled containers in grocery stores. (Not all juices are harmed by heat and processing. In fact, processing frees lycopene from tomatoes, making it available for metabolism; if unfreed, much of the lycopene in tomatoes is excreted. Heating also boosts benefits from broccoli.)
I like quality pomegranate extract capsules because they are not affected by normal temperatures and don't have the sugar that the juice has.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi harpman,
I'm responding to your post of 3/10 to Tall Allen, #9 on this thread, in which you wrote in part (with my responses interspersed in green):
[QUOTE=harpman;4703361]Tall Allen
My worry is that men who have already been diagnosed with prostate cancer especially younger men will put off treatment because they are taking something that reduces their PSA.[QUOTE]
I get the feeling that you are not familiar with the wonderful results from Active Surveillance (AS) programs that have been conducted at a number of major institutions treating prostate cancer, most associated with leading surgeons. Using tactics to slow the rise of PSA, stabilize it, or actually decrease the level is an approach used by some of the centers, based on a lot of supportive research. The main centers I know of include U. of Toronto, Sunnybrook (Dr. Laurence Klotz, MD, with the longest and largest group, now numbering over 500, running since 1995); Johns Hopkins University (Dr. H. Ballentine Carter, MD); Memorial Sloan Kettering (Dr. Peter Scardino, MD); Erasmus Medical Center, Netherlands (Dr. Fritz Schröder, MD); MD Anderson (Dr. Babaian, MD); the University of California, San Francisco (Dr. Peter Carroll, MD); and the Cleveland Clinic. For instance, Dr. Klotz has written about the 5-alpha reductase inhibitor (5-ARI) drugs, especially finasteride as I recall it, to help counter very low-risk prostate cancer.
You are not alone in your concern though. Two leading US surgeons, Drs. Patrick Walsh (Johns Hopkins) and William Catalona (Northwestern University) recommend against using finasteride for instance. However, an overwhelming majority of their expert colleagues find reduction countermeasures reasonable, including use of 5-ARI drugs. At a recent FDA advisory committee on December 1, 2010, Dr. Walsh made comments which showed he did not understand the importance of the 5-ARI drugs. There are prominent colleagues at his institution who sharply disagree with him on this score.
Quote:
I drank a lot of pomegranate juice in my time and my urologist told me he had patients that were drinking so much pomegranate juice there anus's were blistered.
I have never heard of that side effect at the dose used in the UCLA study. Patients sometimes go off the deep end when they get part of the story, likely also partly misunderstood. The UCLA team determined that 8 ounces daily was a good dose. In part they were concerned about excessive sugar if the intake were substantially higher. By the way, if you want to check, the UCLA study has been published and you can obtain the whole paper and look at the side effects section to see if they found any problems. I'm not aware of significant problems. The Johns Hopkins study has been at least published as an abstract and may have been formally published. It too would have a side effects section.
Quote:
As for hormone treatments before surgery and radiation Dr. Critz told me that there was no statistical evidence that this increased life span and just unnecessarily subjected men to the side effects of hormones.
Drs. Critz and Dattoli have argued about this for years, though Dr. Dattoli is far from alone in advocating hormonal therapy in the radiation community of doctors. A key problem with "life span" as evidence is that we prostate cancer patients survive so long these days; in effect, basing your case on such evidence seems to me to be a cop out. For instance, nearly 100% of white men survived at the five year point since diagnosis, and that was based on the years 1996-2004, with prostate cancer technology having improved considerably since then. In fact, at ten years, nearly 100% of low and intermediate risk patients are alive, as well as 95% of high-risk patients. Do you see the problem here with life span evidence?
On the other hand, non-recurrence based on PSA measurement is a far more timely indicator. There is a number of studies that demonstrate superior response to radiation when a one time, limited course of hormonal therapy is also used if the patients have higher risk cases.
I considered Dr. Critz's Radiation Clinics of Georgia (RCOG) approach when I was seeking a therapy back in 2000, as did noted prostate cancer medical oncologist Dr. Charles "Snuffy" Myers for his own challenging case. Dr. Myers chose Dr. Dattoli because Dr. Dattoli's strategy included hormonal therapy, while Dr. Critz's did not.
Do you have any insight into why the has failed to update their follow-up statistics for many years now? We have their medium-term success, but we need to know if their program has worked in the longer term. We do have such follow-up, with most impressive success, from at least a couple of other radiation centers.
Quote:
I know that on the surface it makes sense that a smaller prostate would be easier to treat surgically as it is a difficult surgery tucked under the pubic bone and that a smaller area could be targeted using radiation.
Hormonal therapy does not seem to yield better outcomes as a boost for surgery for low-risk men, though there is some evidence that it helps with node positive men (Mayo Clinic, Dr. Zincke). However, there is substantial evidence that it helps with radiation. Not only does it shrink the prostate, often aiding access to radiation, but it appears to make the cancer cells more sensitive to the radiation.
I hope this gives you some useful leads. If you need some specific study citations, I can provide them.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi rhome,
You asked:
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhome
Jim
There are so many capsules on the market how do we know which ones to buy. I bought mine from the vitamine shoppe.
I know of research on two brands: the POM Wonderful brand, and the Life Extension Foundation brand. I've heard physician/researchers describe the research firsthand for the POM Wonderful brand, and POM Wonderful conducted its own research on pomegranate supplements, finding that four brands appeared to be potent by its standards. One was its own brand, another was the Life Extension brand, and I don't remember the other two. I do remember that the Puritan's Pride pomegranate capsule did not score well. I tried to access the research again recently, but I could no longer find it. I suspect the POM Wonderful company had to stop publishing it in order to comply with an FDA directive.
Re: Promegranate Juice May Slow Prostate Cancer According to UCLA Study
Hi you are welcome. A source that I respect said that both raw and cooked foods should be consumed, interesting. Since heat does destroy some nutrients though I would be reluctant to use only bottled or canned food.
Unfortunately, there are many bogus claims on the one hand, with greedy hucksters trying to foist unreliable claims and products on the public, and stubborn doctors and medical "authorities" on the other, unwilling to recognize the merits of legitimate nutritional items and supplements. It can be hard for the layman and even those with medical knowledge to separate fact from fiction.
