SAN ANTONIO - Prostate cancer prevention is taking a major step forward thanks to a new study.
- Drug known as Finasteride
- Study incorporated 19,000 men
- Study lasted more than 20 years
Dr. Ian Thompson, president of Christus Santa Rosa Hospital Medical Center, was the principal investigator back in 1993 when the study started.
"This drug costs pennies a day and it dramatically reduces the risk of the most common cancer in men," said Thompson.
The drug is known as Finasteride and the study was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"It's been an enormous amount of work,” said Thompson.
He said results from nearly 19,000 men from 200 institutions across the United States show something very promising.
"Now we know that a man who is being tested with PSA testing, that's a lot of men in the United States, those men who are having their PSA tested, can reduce their risk of prostate cancer by 25 percent," he said.
During the trials with Finasteride over more than two decades, fewer than 100 men died from prostate cancer. It's a generic drug and has been around for a while and used to treat urinary tract infections and baldness in men.
However now, Dr. Thompson said both physicians and patients can trust the results.
"It's a very inexpensive way to control cancer. We have drugs that cost $100,000 a year to improve a person's life expectancy by three or four months," said Thompson.
While hundreds of scientists and researchers put decades of work into the study, Thompson said the men in the study can't be thanked enough.
"They have changed the science of prostate cancer and they've changed the way the disease has been treated for generations to come. It really helped millions of men and it's really gratifying to now have that answer," he said.
Read the full study on the New England Journal of Medicine website.