Men over 70 years of age with early-stage prostate cancer have 20 percent higher mortality if they are treated first with hormone therapy before being treated with radiation seed implants (brachytherapy), compared to men who are treated with brachytherapy alone, according to the largest cohort study of its kind presented September 23, 2008, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 50th Annual Meeting in Boston.

A new Fox Chase Cancer Center study suggests men with early stage prostate cancer treated with radiation therapy should begin hormone therapy immediately if their PSA level rises quickly and doubles within six months at any time after treatment.

For men with locally advanced prostate cancer the addition of radiation treatment to anti-androgen hormone therapy reduces the risk of dying of prostate cancer by 50 percent compared to those who have anti-androgen hormone treatment alone, according to a randomized study presented September 22, 2008, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 50th Annual Meeting in Boston.

Low-dose growth hormone treatment reduced abdominal fat deposits and improved blood pressure and triglyceride levels in a group of patients with HIV lipodystrophy, a condition involving the redistribution of fat and other metabolic changes in patients receiving combination drug therapy for HIV infection.

Once heralded as a promising obesity treatment, the hormone leptin lost its fat-fighting luster when scientists discovered overweight patients were resistant to its effects. But pairing leptin with just a minor amount of exercise seems to revive the hormone’s ability to fight fat again, University of Florida researchers recently discovered.

A new analysis of a subgroup of participants in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) hormone therapy clinical trials suggests that healthy, postmenopausal women whose blood cholesterol levels are normal or lower are not at increased, short-term risk for heart attack when taking hormone therapy.

A research study has found that a simple blood test may indicate whether post-menopausal hormone therapies present an elevated risk of a heart attack.

Women who take postmenopausal hormones appear to have a lower risk of developing advanced stages of the eye disease age-related macular degeneration, especially if they had also taken oral contraceptives in the past, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) investigators have produced another article [1], which probably marks the opening of another set of publications, in which the consequences of a further 2.4-year follow-up (after cessation of the study medication) on the estrogen + progestogen (E + P) cohort are reported.

An increased cancer risk in post-menopausal women after they stopped taking combined hormone therapy was an “unexpected finding” in a study that will be reported in the March 5 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), said Rowan T. Chlebowski, M.D., Ph.D., a Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) lead investigator who contributed to the study.

WHI follow-up study confirms health risks of long-term combination hormone therapy outweigh benefits for postmenopausal women

A follow-up study of women who stopped taking the hormone therapy of estrogen plus progestin after this intervention was discontinued as part of a clinical trial indicates that these women may have an increased risk of cancer, compared to women in the placebo group, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA.