Background: Randomized trials showed the survival benefits of the combined use of androgen receptor axis-targeted agents with androgen deprivation therapy in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC), regardless of the risk. However, treating patients with low-risk mHSPC with such intensive treatment is still debatable.
Methods: This retrospective study included 155 low-risk patients among 467 mHSPC patients treated in our affiliated institutions. The association between predictive factors and treatment outcomes was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test. Predictive factors for castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC)-free survival were investigated using Cox regression analyses.
Results: During the median follow-up of 39 months, 38.7% of patients developed CRPC and 14.2% died. In the multivariate analyses, a presence of Gleason pattern 5 (hazard ratio [HR] 2.04), high alkaline phosphatase (HR 1.007) and high lactate dehydrogenase (HR 1.009) were significant predictive factors for shorter CRPC-free survival. Finally, 155 patients were stratified into favorable- and unfavorable-risk groups based on the numbers of the predictive factors. The overall survival (OS) in the unfavorable-risk group (total scores: 2-3) was significantly worse than that of the favorable-risk group (total score: 0-1) (P = 0.02). This prognostic model was assessed with 50 low-risk mHSPC patients from the external validation dataset and found both the time to CRPC, and the OS in the unfavorable-risk group was significantly worse than that of the favorable-risk group (P < 0.01).
Conclusions: The combination of Gleason pattern 5, high alkaline phosphatase and lactate dehydrogenase can predict those with worse OS in low-risk mHSPC patients.
Keywords: Gleason score; alkaline phosphatase; lactate dehydrogenase; low-risk metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer; survival.
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