Drinking regular or decaffeinated coffee is associated with a reduced risk of advanced prostate cancer, new research conducted at the Channing Laboratory in Boston suggests. Men who drank the most coffee had a 59% decreased risk of either lethal or advanced prostate cancer compared with men who drank no coffee. The magnitude of risk reduction was more pronounced in men who never smoked.

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USHIFU has announced the establishment of India HIFU and the launch of Sonablate(R) HIFU services in Hyderabad, India at Dr. Ramayya’s Pramila Hospital for the treatment of prostate disease. The introduction of the Sonablate(R)500 and the HIFU technology for the treatment of prostate cancer marks a major milestone in the practice of urology in the Indian sub-continent. As the population is aging with a healthy lifestyle it is imperative that patients with prostate cancer are offered a viable alternative to the existing therapy options of surgery and radiotherapy.

Cardium Therapeutics and its operating unit InnerCool Therapies, Inc., has developed a pelvic cooling catheter system called UroCool(TM). The product is designed to induce localized cooling during surgery for prostate cancer (radical prostatectomy). The new technology is being applied in collaboration with renowned prostate surgeon, Thomas E. The UroCool(TM) catheter is placed within the rectal cavity adjacent to the prostate during surgery. It is used in conjunction with InnerCool’s Celsius Control Console which circulates cold saline in a closed loop within the catheter to allow for localized cooling.

According to the findings of a clinical study conducted by researchers from Umea University in Sweden, adult male patients of locally advanced prostate cancer can gain from addition of radiation to androgen deprivation therapy. The study found that the group which received radiotherapy along with hormone therapy had greater survival rate. The risk of death from prostate cancer was cut by half.

A  recent research led by Dr Eric A Singer, chief urology resident at the Department of Urology, University of Rochester Medical Center has found that men who regularly took common painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) had lower circulating levels of PSA (prostate-specific antigen). These levels are the indicators used by doctors to assess whether a person is at risk of prostate cancer. The findings suggest that regular use of NSAIDs lowered PSA levels by almost 10 per cent compared.

Researchers report finding a new blood biomarker that enables close to 98% accuracy in predicting the spread of prostate cancer to regional lymph nodes.

When cancer spreads beyond a solid tumor, it often does so at a microscopic level that typically cannot be identified by conventional imaging methods such as CT scans. The new blood test measures levels of endoglin, a plasma biomarker that has been previously shown to predict the spread of colon and breast cancer. In this study, researchers concluded for the first time that endoglin could help predict whether a patient’s prostate cancer would spread beyond the solid tumor site into their lymph nodes.

“For prostate cancer, we have hit the limit of our ability to classify risk in these patients before initial surgery. We currently use prostate specific antigen, Gleason grade and a rectal exam, but the predictive value of those three tests is inadequate for predicting what cancers will spread. Conventional imaging modalities used for clinical staging in prostate cancer are inadequate to detect small but clinically significant lymph node metastases.” said study author Shahrokh F. Shariat, MD, chief urology resident at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

This study is published in the March 1 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

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