Radium 223

[linpisarn]

Is radium 223 still an effective treatment.

[AlanMeyer]

It won't cure prostate cancer, it does nothing for cancer in "soft tissue" (lymph nodes, lungs, heart, stomach, etc.) and it doesn't work for everyone. However it can kill a lot of cancer in bones. If you have cancer in the bones. Ra-233 (trade name Xofigo) can relieve the pain. If the bone cancer is life threatening, it can extend your life.

Alan

[Tall_Allen]

Yes, of course, why do you ask?

[linpisarn in reply to Tall_Allen]

My oncologist has mentioned this a possible treatment. I was on zytiga for six months and had good initial response but my psa started to rise the last three months and I switched to xtandia 10 days ago. I have lots of activity on my bones according to a recent bone scan, lots of pain in the evenings.

[Tall_Allen in reply to linpisarn]

It is great for pain and for shrinking bone metastases. Probably a good idea to also take a bone-preserving agent with it (Zometa or Xgeva). Also add Celebrex if your doctor is ok with it.

[Rkoma in reply to Tall_Allen]

Hi TA

I found lot of data saying it reduced the pain but never saw how much mets shrinked after 6 injections. Do you have such data

Best regards

Rkoma

[Tall_Allen in reply to Rkoma]

The most important measure is that it reduced risk of death by 30%. The median time to the first symptomatic skeletal event was reeduced by 34%. That was in the ALSYMPCA trial:

nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa...