Patients with papillary thyroid cancer typically undergo a triad of consecutive initial treatments, comprising surgery, radioiodine therapy, and thyroid hormone suppression of serum thyrotropin (thyroid-stimulating hormone, or TSH). More »

Differentiated thyroid cancer, the most common endocrine malignancy, can touch the lives of young and old individuals. It is generally associated with a normal lifespan whether it is completely eradicated or held in check with judicious medical interventions. More »

There is uniform agreement that initial treatment of high-risk thyroid cancer should include total thyroidectomy, compartmental neck dissection of clinically involved cervical lymph nodes, and radioactive iodine (RAI) remnant ablation. More »

Low-risk papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), by definition, requires careful balancing of the risks of treatment and the risks of the disease. More »

Physicians have known since 1941 that testosterone suppression benefits patients with symptomatic metastatic prostate cancer.[1] The pioneering study in this regard showed that estrogen therapy achieved comparable efficacy to castration by improving acid and alkaline phosphatase levels associated with relief of cancer-related symptoms. More than 6 decades later, however, many of the therapies subsequently developed for achieving androgen deprivation still suffer from serious limitations. More »

Crawford and Hou[1] review the data on luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) antagonists in prostate cancer. They describe the results of a phase III trial comparing monthly degarelix to monthly leuprolide in men with advanced prostate cancer. Degarelix treatment was associated with a more rapid decline of serum testosterone, and was not associated with an initial surge of serum testosterone seen during the first few days of treatment with leuprolide. They discuss the role of this new... More »

The recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of degarelix, a luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) antagonist, has renewed interest in this class of drugs as a prostate cancer therapy. Approval was based on a prospective phase III trial of 610 patients randomized to one of two dosing schedules of degarelix, or standard-of-care monthly leuprolide acetate monotherapy, with initial antiandrogen therapy allowed at the treating physician’s discretion for prevention of clinical... More »

Drs. Crawford and Hou provide an important clinical introduction to a novel class of hormonal agents that have been under development for several decades for the treatment of advanced and metastatic prostate cancer. More »

Many women have turned to natural forms of hormone replacement for menopause since learning that conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may increase their risks of breast cancer and other health problems. Most women have assumed that “natural” or “bioidentical” HRT is safer than conventional HRT. However, recent research has shown that this is not the case and that, in fact, the risks are probably similar. More »

The addition of rituximab (Rituxan) to systemic chemotherapy has improved the response rates, progression-free survival, and overall survival of patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) compared to chemotherapy alone. In the front-line setting, the use of rituximab is changing the biology and clinical behavior in DLBCL patients who fail to respond or relapse following chemoimmunotherapy. More »