The importance of continued endocrine treatment during chemotherapy of hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

Objective: It is unclear if continuing with androgen deprivation in hormone-refractory prostate cancer is of any benefit. We report here 3 cases where continuation of androgen deprivation was essential in maintaining the response to chemotherapy.

Results: In the 3 patients there was an initial response to chemotherapy before relapse, as assessed by prostate-specific antigen levels. However, restarting the previously ineffective hormone therapy resulted in continued response to chemotherapy.

Conclusions: In some patients continued androgen deprivation is essential to the response to chemotherapy. Presumably, in hormone-relapsed disease a significant proportion of the tumour can still be responsive to androgen deprivation.