Hormonal therapy for prostate cancer

Since the demonstration in 1941 by Huggins and Hodges that prostatic cancers are androgen dependent, hormonal treatment by androgen ablation has been the principal treatment for patients with advanced adenocarcinoma of the prostate. Although not able to permanently and totally eradicate every cancer cell since prostate cancer cells are quite heterogeneous in their sensitivity to androgens, hormonal therapy can produce dramatic subjective improvement as well as objective remissions. This results in an improved quality of survival and for patients with metastatic adenocarcinoma, endocrine therapy does reduce the death rate from cancer, and if death from other concurrent illness is controlled, there is an absolute increase in survival. At present, a variety of strategies are available for ablation of testicular and adrenal androgens, but results are not clinically significantly better than orchiectomy.