PSA undetectable but regimen continues for year, WHY?

[Mackeyandme]

Starting 3rd month of Zytiga, Prednisone and 1 shot of Lupron. PSA has gone from 9.7 to "undetectable". Anyone else experienced this reaction? What does you MO say about it? My guy says "great, but we need to continue with the regimen for at least 1 year". Thoughts? Labs are beginning to show some minor changes in Liver chemicals.

[LearnAll]

Undetectable PSA means at that given point of time, almost all cancer cells are dead. But the ugly fact remains that some of these cancer cells hide and go dormant and can re-sprout when they get a chance. This is the reason longer term treatments are advised.Many men stay on continuous ADT and some men choose to go for Intermittent ADT. Intermittent ADT can be a good choice for men whose cancer is not aggressive ..based on labs, scans, histopathology report and genetic germline test results.

[Magnus1964]

Undetectable means the treatment is working, stay with it.

[Tall_Allen]

Why is radiation of the pelvic lymph nodes impractical? Without radiation, Lupron + Zytiga must continue until the cancer becomes Zytiga-resistant, not just a year. PSA is not your cancer, it is just a biomarker of activity.

[EdBar]

Metastatic prostate cancer likely goes into a dormant stage due to treatment until it find a workaround to ADT or a change in conditions allow it to resume activity. If it works don’t fix it.

Ed

[London441 in reply to EdBar]

I’m sorry I can’t go with it ain’t broke don’t fix it, the treatment is working stay with it etc without knowing, as TA asks, why radiation is ‘impractical’. Impractical is far too vague a term for us to know if he should be on ADT monotherapy or not.

We want the sand to pass through the hourglass as slowly as possible. ADT monotherapy not the best choice for that-depending on just what is meant by impractical.

[SteveTheJ]

I dunno: ADT or cancer, which is better?

[Hailwood]

Stay with it as many of the wise posters on this site will tell you. Lupron/Erleada for 18 months now and no real issues that stop me working full time. Glad that everything is working for you

[Hidden]

You might want to consider low dose cialis therapy to ward off atrophy while on ADT. Doctors rarely warn you or care about that effect.