BICALUTAMIDE - A NEW ANTIANDROGEN FOR USE IN COMBINATION WITH CASTRATION FOR PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED PROSTATE-CANCER

Maximum androgen blockade, a relatively recent development in the trea tment of prostate cancer, combines medical or surgical castration with antiandrogen therapy, A large randomized study comparing the non-ster oidal antiandrogen, bicalutamide, with flutamide, each in combination with luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) analogs, showed that after a median follow-up of 49 weeks, the time to treatment failure w as significantly longer for the bicalutamide patients compared with th e flutamide patients (p=0.005). After a median follow up of 95 weeks, bicalutamide in combination with LHRH analog therapy produced at least equivalent efficacy with flutamide in combination with LHRH analog th erapy in terms of time to treatment failure and equivalent efficacy in terms of survival. The tolerability profile of bicalutamide, as based on reported findings and a literature review, indicates a superior to lerability to that of currently available antiandrogens, particularly with respect to diarrhea with a low incidence of treatment-related wit hdrawals.