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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Men who are suffering from hot flashes caused by prostate cancer treatment may find relief from a drug used to treat epilepsy and pain associated with the shingles.
In research involving 223 patients on androgen deprivation therapy, those who received the highest dose of the drug gabapentin (Neurontin) saw about a 46-percent reduction in the intensity and frequency of their hot flashes.
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The investigators explain men on androgen deprivation therapy often experience hot flashes because the treatment significantly lowers testosterone levels. Lowering testosterone levels is important because many prostate cancers are fed by the male hormone. While other hormonal treatments can help with hot flashes, many men opt not to take them for fears they could also cause their cancers to grow.
Gabapentin is a non-hormonal treatment and thus wont affect prostate cancer growth.
[Gabapentin] provides an immediate clinical option that has not been previously available for treatment of hot flash side effects, and it is a welcome one, study author Charles Loprinzi, M.D., from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., was quoted as saying. To my knowledge, this is the first non-hormonal treatment of hot flashes in men.
The authors note the highest dose used in the study -- 900 milligrams per day -- is just a third of that which is normally used to treat epileptic seizures, pointing to the fact that even better results might be seen if even higher doses were used.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting in Chicago, June 1-5, 2007
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