By David Liu, PHD

Thursday Sept 6, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- Long-term hormone therapy alone is the standard treatment fo men with metastatic or high risk non-metastatic prostate cancer.  A new study in Journal of Clinical Oncology found that adding celecoxib to the treatment did not help improve disease-free survival.

The study is a major international tandomised controlled trial to test 1 or 2 of three medications docetaxel, zoledronic acid and celecoxib in men with prostate cancer starting long term hormone therapy for the first time.

Reported in the journal was only part of the trial results showing that using 400 mg for one year or until disease progression did not provide extra benefits to prostate cancer patients who used hormone therapy.  

In the trial. 2114 patients  were randomized to receive either hormone therapy alone  as control or hormone therapy plus celecoxib.  Adding celecoxib to the prostate cancer treatment did not increase the efficacy of hormone therapy.

Toxicity for both treatments were similar, about 25 percent of prostate cancer patients reported grade 3 toxicities or adverse effects with or without celecoxib.

The researchers concluded "Celecoxib shows no evidence of activity in this setting."  Because of the negative finding, patients who were using celecoxib were asked to stop taking the drug.

The trial, supported by MRC, Cancer Research UK, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, and Pfizer was conducted by Nicholas David James  and colleagues.