Lowers cost of prostate cancer 23 per cent, trial shows
In a four-year trial of over 6,500 men with enlarged prostates, those who took the drug dutasteride had a 23 per cent lower risk of prostate cancer than those on a placebo, a large international study has shown. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study notes that all men in the study were at high risk of the disease. The study looked at men aged 50 to 75, the BBC reports, who were at high risk because they had high PSA scores (a blood test that can indicate disease) but were found not to have prostate cancer. Over the course of the study, prostate cancer was found in 659 men taking the drug, and 858 who weren’t. Among men with a family history of prostate cancer, the drug lowered the relative risk of a diagnosis by 31.4 per cent.