Softly, softly, catchee monkey?

[pjoshea13]

In my post of 14 days ago - "A victim of success?" - I report on a study which indicated that a rapid rate of cell death will cause the appearance of a protein that spurs cell growth. This is perfectly reasonable. The body can't afford to have cell death in a vital organ, say, outrun cell division.

It's taken me two weeks to connect it with a post of 3 months ago:

"Rapidly decreasing level of PSA during ADT is a risk factor for early progression to CRPC."

CancerSucks responded with: "These findings are not new."

"Time to PSA nadir independently predicts overall survival in metastatic hormone sensitive prostate cancer patients treated with androgen deprivation therapy" (2009)

"To our knowledge, this is the first report to show that a faster time to reach a PSA nadir post-ADT initiation is associated with shorter survival duration in men with metastatic HSPC. These results need confirmation, but may indicate that a rapid initial response to ADT indicates more aggressive disease."

Instead of "a rapid initial response to ADT indicates more aggressive disease" (which makes no sense to me), perhaps "a rapid initial response to ADT CAUSES more aggressive disease".

This is not a cancer response, but a universal response to unusual cell death.

Thirty years into the PSA era & we are still over-reliant on it. Studies look to a >50% PSA response as a measure of success, & the faster the better.

We become disheartened when a change of therapy produces a tepid PSA response.

But maybe a slow decline is optimal?

...

Drugs & supplements can affect PSA in two ways: cell death & cell cycle arrest.

There is a new vitamin E study that I am about to post, where:

"in addition to G1 arrest caused by the treatment with δ-T3, the combination of δ-T3 with γ-Toc induced G2/M arrest"

OK, that looks like gibberish, but:

"δ-T3" is delta tocotrienol vitamin E

"γ-Toc" is gamma tocopherol vitamin E

"G1" is the first phase of cell division (prior to DNA replication)

"G2" is the final phase before "M" - mitosis (cell divides)

It used to disappoint me that a supplement might halt growth without causing cell death, but there is something attractive about it, in the absence of a cure.

Perhaps it is rapid cell death that we should be wary of? At least until we have a way of inhibiting the appearance of the growth protein.

-Patrick

[cesanon]

So are these levels they types of vitamin serum levels you are likely to get from vitamin supplement?

[pjoshea13]

See the actual vitamin E post that followed - I was just citing the study here as an example where we might arrest cell cycle progression.

-Patrick

[Geoff-H]

There was a similar finding showing that more rapid PSA rate of decline post EBRT was associated with PCSM.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/236...

[pjoshea13 in reply to Geoff-H]

Good one Geoff. Makes one fearful of aggressive treatment that is too successful. -Patrick

[Hazard in reply to Geoff-H]

Bloody hell you can't win with this bastard can you. Luckily I had zero response to IMRT and zero response to ADT. LOL

[Sisira]

But still you can SUCCEED in a failure!

Sisira

[rococo]

Good response for the first several months, than tapering off seems best but we always liked seeing a quick psa response and felt relieved. Need better marker for aggressive pc, pap use to be one, some still use it, Dr Myers did. Never discourage. Besr to alll. Rocco

[Roland632017]

Hi Patrick

How can I achieved a better than expected improvement by as you said you need to kill the invading cancer cells slowly, Please offer some advice.

Thanks

[pjoshea13]

Roland,

Ultimately, treatment will perhaps will include an inhibitor of the growth protein.

In the short term, I doubt that it will be easy to find a doctor familiar with the new papers - or even the old human studies.

The PSA response rate determines whether you are a fast responder or not. The obvious approach, if feasible, is to work up to the dose where one feels comfortable with the presumed kill rate. You'd need a sympathetic doctor for that.

-Patrick