In Costa Rica, prostate cancer is the disease with the highest incidence among men. It ranks fifth in deaths, with 409 annually. The world average is of 29 by each 100 thousand inhabitants; but, in our country, it is almost double: 58 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Global Cancer Observatory.
In this context, Costa Rican men today have a new drug to deal with this deadly disease: darolutamide. It is an innovative drug that inhibits the action of the Androgen Receptor pathway in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer in its non-metastatic stage (which begins in the prostate and continues to grow even when the amount of testosterone in the body is reduced to very low levels and that it has not spread to other parts of the body).
Darolutamide which is a prescription medicine used to treat men with prostate cancer that has not spread to other parts of the body and is no longer responding to testosterone-lowering medical or surgical treatment.
“Let’s remember that testosterone binds to an androgen receptor (AR), which causes prostate cancer cells to grow. Darolutamide prevents testosterone from binding to the androgen receptor (AR), which helps slow the growth of cancer cells, ”explains Dr. Pilar Robles, Medical Oncology Advisor at Bayer.
Darolutamide benefits
Darolutamide was studied in a clinical trial called ARAMIS with more than 1,500 men with non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC). In this study, patients received hormone blocking therapy plus darolutamide or hormone blocking therapy alone; with hormonal blocking therapy the standard treatment.
The study measured the prolongation of life without the prostate cancer spreading to other parts of the body, which is also called metastasis-free survival (MFS). The study showed that darolutamide slowed the spread of prostate cancer to other parts of the body.
“Men who received darolutamide lived more than twice as long without their cancer spreading compared to men who received hormone deprivation therapy alone (TPA). That is, 3.4 years with darolutamide versus 1.5 with TPA alone ”, explained Dr. Robles.
One of the main conclusions of the study is that this drug prolongs both metastasis-free survival and overall survival without affecting quality of life. Furthermore, it reduced the risk of death by 31% versus TPA alone: 83% of men were still alive after 3 years of treatment with darolutamide plus TPA (compared to 77% with TPA alone).
Another of the essential results of the study is that the overall frequency of adverse effects in patients treated with darolutamide plus TPA showed a minimal difference versus TPA alone; there was no significant increase in treatment abandonment due to adverse effects, even with a longer follow-up period. “In fact, 94% of the men treated with darolu
