Background:
Prostate cancer treatment in Africa mainly involves treatment with hormonal manipulation after orchiectomy and hormone manipulation alone. There are very limited if any prospective data on effect of prostate cancer treatment types on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in Africans with prostate cancer.
Aim:This study examined the effect of treatment with hormonal manipulation after orchiectomy (HMO) and hormone manipulation alone (HM) on CVD risk factors in prostate cancer patients.
Methods:The serum lipid profile was estimated in 153 prostate cancer patients and 88 apparently healthy men. Body mass index (BMI), Waist circumference, Systolic & Diastolic Blood Pressure were also measured. The prostate cancer patients were further subdivided into 3 groups: Fresh cases, HMO and HM groups.
Results:The prostate cancer patients had significantly higher (p<0.05) mean values of waist circumference compared to the controls. When the fresh cases where compared with the treated cases, the treated cases had significantly higher (p<0.05) total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, BMI and waist circumference. We observed that the HMO group showed significantly higher (p<0.05) mean value only in BMI and waist circumference while the HM group, in addition to these, had significantly higher (p<0.05) mean values of total and LDL-cholesterol when compared with the fresh cases.
Conclusions:
From the results obtained in our own study, it appears that hormonal manipulation post orchiectomy may be a better option for androgen deprivation than hormonal manipulation alone because patients under the first option had less CVD risk factors compared to the latter. The only problem being that orchiectomy may not be very popular with the African man as being virile is seen as the greatest essence of manhood in Africa shown by the fact that in our study only 36% of patients chose hormonal manipulation post orchiectomy as a treatment option compared to 64% who chose hormonal manipulation alone.