Trending News Today: Hormone Therapy Linked to Dementia

A new study has found that hormone therapy for prostate cancer is associated with an increased risk of dementia, according to The New York Times. The study, published in the JAMA Network Open, included approximately 154,089 men whose average age was 74 and who had diagnoses of prostate cancer. Compared with men who had no hormone therapy, 1 to 4 doses of ADT was associated with a 19% increased risk for both Alzheimer disease and other forms of dementia, and the risk increased with the number of doses.

Cancer took more than 8.7 million years of life and $94.4 billion in lost earnings among people ages 16 to 84 in the United States in 2015, according to a report through the American Cancer Society. In order to update estimated lost earnings due to death from cancer, the study authors calculated person-years of life lost using numbers of cancer deaths and life expectancy data. There were a total of 492,146 cancer deaths that occurred in 2015 and there was an approximate $191,900 over lost earnings per death.

New data have shown for the first time that a combination of targeted therapies can improve survival in patients with advanced bowel cancer, according to the MD Anderson Cancer Center. The data suggest that the 3-drug therapy combination, encorafenib, binimetinib, and cetuximab, should replace chemotherapy for the 1 in 7 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have a BRAF mutation. The results of the trial indicated an improved overall survival and objective response compared with standard care.