Abiraterone is effective and should be considered for the treatment of metastatic castrate-naïve prostate cancer.

Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) has been the standard of care for the treatment of newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer for the past 70 years. Furthermore, adding docetaxel chemotherapy to ADT significantly improved patient survival, and thus became the new standard for patients with high volume disease. However, recent evidence has called this treatment strategy into question since a published study has shown that the drug abiraterone has a similar benefit to docetaxel in a similar patient population group but with less toxicity. The following article considers this key paper and its implications. Areas covered: In this key paper evaluation, the authors discuss the rational, trial design and results of the LATITUDE trial. Furthermore, the past and current standard of care of metastatic castrate-naïve prostate cancer (mCNPC) is discussed, while the authors also compare abiraterone and docetaxel in terms of benefit, safety profile, and affordability. Expert opinion: Abiraterone is highly effective and has an excellent safety profile for the treatment of metastatic castrate-naïve prostate cancer. It is the authors' opinion that it should now be considered the new standard of care.