Women’s HRT patches can treat prostate cancer just as effectively as standard hormone injections – but with fewer of the worst side-effects – according to a large UK trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The finding could change how men with prostate cancer that has spread beyond the gland are treated for years to come.
Standard treatment has long relied on shutting down testosterone, the fuel that drives many tumours, through regular injections that turn off the body’s own hormone production. They are effective, but they are blunt tools, dragging down oestrogen as well as testosterone and taking a heavy toll on quality of life with hot flushes, brittle bones and metabolic problems. Now, in an elegant twist of biology, the very hormone patches used to ease menopause symptoms in women are being repurposed to treat prostate cancer in men.
