
"Health wise I am feeling great. I am a big supporter of trials - it allows new treatments and drugs to be brought in.”
This trial was comparing hormone therapy and radiotherapy together with hormone therapy alone for prostate cancer that had grown through the covering of the prostate gland (locally advanced prostate cancer).
Doctors often treated locally advanced prostate cancer with hormone therapy alone. The aim of this trial was to see if having a combination of both hormone therapy and radiotherapy helped men to live longer than having hormone therapy alone.
The trial team found that on average, men who had both hormone therapy and radiotherapy lived longer than men who had hormone therapy alone.
The trial recruited 1,205 men, including more than 800 in the UK.
The researchers looked at how many men were still alive 7 years after treatment. They found this was
Prostate cancer had come back in
In 2012, the researchers presented their final analysis of the results. By then, they had followed up the men taking part for an average of 8 years and found that overall, adding radiotherapy to hormone therapy significantly reduced the risk of death.
Unfortunately, 465 of the men who took part in the trial had died.
The researchers found that 199 of the deaths were due to prostate cancer or its treatment - 134 in the hormone therapy group and 65 in the hormone therapy and radiotherapy group.
Men who had radiotherapy did have more side effects such as diarrhoea, but they were generally mild.
The trial team concluded that men having both hormone therapy and radiotherapy have a significantly lower chance of dying from disease related causes than men having hormone therapy alone. They suggest that having a combination of hormone therapy and radiotherapy should now be for locally advanced prostate cancer.
We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists () and published in a medical journal or presented at scientific conferences. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Professor Malcolm Mason
Medical Research Council (MRC)
National Institute for Health Research Cancer Research Network (NCRN)
If you have questions about the trial please contact our cancer information nurses
Freephone 0808 800 4040
"Health wise I am feeling great. I am a big supporter of trials - it allows new treatments and drugs to be brought in.”