Testosterone Replacement Therapy OK for Precancerous Prostate

 Recent research suggests that testosterone replacement therapy for men does not appear to encourage the growth of prostate cancer, even in men with the precancerous condition prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia. Drs. Ernani Luis Rhoden and Abraham Morgenthaler of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts studied the effects of 12 months of testosterone replacement therapy on 20 men who had prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia and 55 who had normal biopsies. Results showed that prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels were similar in both groups both at the beginning of the study and after 12 months of replacement therapy. None of the men with normal biopsies at the beginning of the study developed prostate cancer, however one of the men with prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia did develop cancer. Although the researchers stress that prostate cancer develops within three years in up to a quarter of patients with prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia, and therefore "it would be difficult to implicate testosterone replacement therapy " as the cause of the patient's cancer.

SOURCE/REFERENCE: The Journal of Urology. 2003;170:2348-2351.