We designed a nationwide study to investigate the association between socioeconomic factors (household income and education) and different aspects of prostate cancer care, considering both ...individual‐ and neighbourhood‐level variables. Data were obtained from Prostate Cancer data Base Sweden (PCBaSe), a research database with data from several national health care registers including clinical characteristics and treatments for nearly all men diagnosed with prostate cancer in Sweden. Four outcomes were analysed: use of pre‐biopsy magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 2018–2020 (n = 11,843), primary treatment of high‐risk non‐metastatic disease in 2016–2020 (n = 6633), rehabilitation (≥2 dispensed prescriptions for erectile dysfunction within 1 year from surgery in 2016–2020, n = 6505), and prostate cancer death in 7770 men with high‐risk non‐metastatic disease diagnosed in 2010–2016. Unadjusted and adjusted odds and hazard ratios (OR/HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Adjusted odds ratio (ORs) comparing low versus high individual education were 0.74 (95% CI 0.66–0.83) for pre‐biopsy MRI, 0.66 (0.54–0.81) for primary treatment, and 0.82 (0.69–0.97) for rehabilitation. HR gradients for prostate cancer death were significant on unadjusted analysis only (low vs. high individual education HR 1.41, 95% CI 1.17–1.70); co‐variate adjustments markedly attenuated the gradients (low vs. high individual education HR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90–1.35). Generally, neighbourhood‐level analyses showed weaker gradients over the socioeconomic strata, except for pre‐biopsy MRI. Socioeconomic factors influenced how men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in Sweden but had less influence on subsequent specialist care. Neighbourhood‐level socioeconomic data are more useful for evaluating inequality in diagnostics than in later specialist care.
What's new?
Socioeconomic factors influence individual cancer characteristics, as well as quality of cancer care and patient outcomes. Few studies on socioeconomic differences, however, have clearly described impacts specifically on prostate cancer care. Here, the authors investigated associations between aspects of care and education and household income among men with prostate cancer in Sweden. Analyses show that household income and education are significantly associated with use of pre‐biopsy magnetic resonance imaging, primary treatment, sexual rehabilitation after surgery, and cause‐specific mortality for high‐risk non‐metastatic prostate cancer. Covariate adjustments attenuated socioeconomic mortality gradients, suggesting that socioeconomic factors influence diagnostics more than later specialist prostate cancer care.
In recent years, texture analysis of medical images has become increasingly popular in studies investigating diagnosis, classification and treatment response assessment of cancerous disease. Despite ...numerous applications in oncology and medical imaging in general, there is no consensus regarding texture analysis workflow, or reporting of parameter settings crucial for replication of results. The aim of this study was to assess how sensitive Haralick texture features of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) MR images are to changes in five parameters related to image acquisition and pre-processing: noise, resolution, how the ADC map is constructed, the choice of quantization method, and the number of gray levels in the quantized image. We found that noise, resolution, choice of quantization method and the number of gray levels in the quantized images had a significant influence on most texture features, and that the effect size varied between different features. Different methods for constructing the ADC maps did not have an impact on any texture feature. Based on our results, we recommend using images with similar resolutions and noise levels, using one quantization method, and the same number of gray levels in all quantized images, to make meaningful comparisons of texture feature results between different subjects.
Objective
To estimate the long‐term risks of severe late toxicities for radiation therapy (RT) following radical prostatectomy (RP) in an unselected nationwide cohort, as severe side‐effects are rare ...but may occur years later.
Patients and Methods
The study population comprised all men undergoing RP between 1997 and 2016 in the Prostate Cancer database Sweden (PCBaSe) (n = 40 962). By (1:2) matching, two cohorts were created: 2789 men exposed to postoperative RT and 5578 unexposed men with comparable age, comorbidities, and year of surgery. Cumulative incidences and rate ratios were calculated for the following outcomes: symptoms and interventions of the urinary or intestinal tract demanding inpatient care, secondary malignancies, and non‐prostate cancer mortality.
Results
The largest differences were seen for late toxicities affecting the urinary tract. The 10‐year cumulative incidences among those exposed to postoperative RT vs the RP‐only group were: 17.8% vs 10.5% for procedures of the urinary tract (difference 7.3%, 95% confidence interval CI 4.4 to 10.3; relative risk RR 1.74, 95% CI 1.47 to 2.05); 6.0% vs 1.2% for haematuria (difference 4.8%, 95% CI 3.1 to 6.5; RR 6.50, 95% CI 4.31 to 10.10); and 2.4% vs 1.1% for bladder cancer (difference 1.4%, 95% CI 0.4 to 2.3; RR 2.71, 95% CI 1.72 to 4.33). The groups were similar regarding intestinal toxicity, other secondary malignancies, and non‐prostate cancer mortality. Adjustments for preoperative tumour risk factors did not importantly affect the rate ratios.
Conclusion
Severe late toxicity after postoperative RT following RP predominately affects the bladder and can appear many years after RT.
Background
Radium‐223 dichloride (radium‐223) is approved for patients with castration‐resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), symptomatic bone metastases, and no visceral disease using a dosing regimen of ...6 injections (55 kBq/kg intravenously; 1 injection every 4 weeks). Early results from international, open‐label, phase 1/2 study NCT01934790 showed that re‐treatment with radium‐223 was well tolerated with favorable effects on disease progression. Here we report safety and efficacy findings from 2‐year follow‐up of the radium‐223 re‐treatment study.
Methods
Patients with CRPC and bone metastases who completed 6 initial radium‐223 injections with no disease progression in bone and later progressed were eligible for radium‐223 re‐treatment (up to 6 additional radium‐223 injections), provided that hematologic parameters were adequate and chemotherapy had not been administered after the initial course of radium‐223. Concomitant cytotoxic agents were not allowed during re‐treatment but were allowed at the investigator's discretion during follow‐up; other concomitant agents for prostate cancer (including abiraterone acetate or enzalutamide) were allowed at investigator's discretion. The primary objective was safety. Exploratory objectives included time to radiographic bone progression, radiographic progression‐free survival (rPFS), time to total alkaline phosphatase (tALP), and prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) progression, overall survival (OS), time to first symptomatic skeletal event (SSE), and SSE‐free survival, all calculated from re‐treatment start. Evaluation of safety and exploratory efficacy objectives included active 2‐year follow‐up. Safety results from active follow‐up and updated efficacy are reported.
Results
Overall, 44 patients were re‐treated with radium‐223; 29 (66%) completed all 6 injections, and 34 (77%) entered 2‐year active follow‐up, during which no new safety concerns and no serious drug‐related adverse events were noted. rPFS events (progression or death) occurred in 19 (43%) of 44 patients; median rPFS was 9.9 months. Radiographic bone progression occurred in 5 (11%) of 44 patients. Median OS was 24.4 months. Median times to first SSE and SSE‐free survival were 16.7 and 12.8 months, respectively. Median time to tALP progression was not reached; median time to PSA progression was 2.2 months.
Conclusions
Re‐treatment with radium‐223 in this selected patient population was well tolerated, led to minimal hematologic toxicity, and provided continued disease control in bone at 2‐year follow‐up.
Radiotherapy (RT) datasets can suffer from variations in annotation of organ at risk (OAR) and target structures. Annotation standards exist, but their description for prostate targets is limited. ...This restricts the use of such data for supervised machine learning purposes as it requires properly annotated data. The aim of this work was to develop a modality independent deep learning (DL) model for automatic classification and annotation of prostate RT DICOM structures.
Delineated prostate organs at risk (OAR), support‐ and target structures (gross tumor volume GTV/clinical target volume CTV/planning target volume PTV), along with or without separate vesicles and/or lymph nodes, were extracted as binary masks from 1854 patients. An image modality independent 2D InceptionResNetV2 classification network was trained with varying amounts of training data using four image input channels. Channel 1–3 consisted of orthogonal 2D projections from each individual binary structure. The fourth channel contained a summation of the other available binary structure masks. Structure classification performance was assessed in independent CT (n = 200 pat) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (n = 40 pat) test datasets and an external CT (n = 99 pat) dataset from another clinic.
A weighted classification accuracy of 99.4% was achieved during training. The unweighted classification accuracy and the weighted average F1 score among different structures in the CT test dataset were 98.8% and 98.4% and 98.6% and 98.5% for the MRI test dataset, respectively. The external CT dataset yielded the corresponding results 98.4% and 98.7% when analyzed for trained structures only, and results from the full dataset yielded 79.6% and 75.2%. Most misclassifications in the external CT dataset occurred due to multiple CTVs and PTVs being fused together, which was not included in the training data.
Our proposed DL‐based method for automated renaming and standardization of prostate radiotherapy annotations shows great potential. Clinic specific contouring standards however need to be represented in the training data for successful use. Source code is available at https://github.com/jamtheim/DicomRTStructRenamerPublic
Perirectal spacers may be beneficial to reduce rectal side effects from radiotherapy (RT). Here, we present the impact of a hyaluronic acid (HA) perirectal spacer on rectal dose as well as spacer ...stability, long-term gastrointestinal (GI) and genitourinary (GU) toxicity and patient-reported outcome (PRO).
In this phase II study 81 patients with low- and intermediate-risk prostate cancer received transrectal injections with HA before external beam RT (78 Gy in 39 fractions). The HA spacer was evaluated with MRI four times; before (MR0) and after HA-injection (MR1), at the middle (MR2) and at the end (MR3) of RT. GI and GU toxicity was assessed by physician for up to five years according to the RTOG scale. PROs were collected using the Swedish National Prostate Cancer Registry and Prostate cancer symptom scale questionnaires.
There was a significant reduction in rectal V70% (54.6 Gy) and V90% (70.2 Gy) between MR0 and MR1, as well as between MR0 to MR2 and MR3. From MR1 to MR2/MR3, HA thickness decreased with 28%/32% and CTV-rectum space with 19%/17% in the middle level. The cumulative late grade ≥ 2 GI toxicity at 5 years was 5% and the proportion of PRO moderate or severe overall bowel problems at 5 years follow-up was 12%. Cumulative late grade ≥ 2 GU toxicity at 5 years was 12% and moderate or severe overall urinary problems at 5 years were 10%.
We show that the HA spacer reduced rectal dose and long-term toxicity.
There is now an unprecedented amount of evidence to consider when revising prostate cancer guidelines. We believe that there is a value in publishing summaries of national clinical guidelines in ...English for others to read and comment on.
This is part 1 of a summary of the Swedish prostate cancer guidelines that were published in June 2022. It covers the early detection, diagnostics, staging, patient support and management of the non-metastatic disease. Part 2 covers recurrence after local treatment and management of the metastatic disease.
The 2022 Swedish guidelines include several new recommendations: rectal iodine-povidone to reduce post-biopsy infections, external beam radiation with focal boost to the tumour, use of a pre-rectal spacer to reduce rectal side effects after external beam radiotherapy in some expert centres, 6 months' concomitant and adjuvant rather than neoadjuvant and concomitant hormonal treatment together with radiotherapy for unfavourable intermediate and high-risk disease, and adjuvant abiraterone plus prednisolone together with a GnRH agonist for a subgroup of men with very high-risk disease. The Swedish guidelines differ from the European by having more restrictive recommendations regarding genetic testing and pelvic lymph node dissection, the risk group classification, recommending ultra-hypofractionated (7 fractions) external radiotherapy for intermediate and selected high-risk cancers, by not recommending any hormonal treatment together with radiotherapy for favourable intermediate-risk disease, and by recommending bicalutamide monotherapy instead of a GnRH agonist for some patient groups.
The 2022 Swedish prostate cancer guidelines include several new recommendations and some that differ from the European guidelines.
Background
Taxane treatment may be a suitable therapeutic option for patients with castration‐resistant prostate cancer and high expression of constitutively active androgen receptor variants ...(AR‐Vs). The aim of the study was to compare the effects of cabazitaxel and androgen deprivation treatments in a prostate tumor xenograft model expressing high levels of constitutively active AR‐V7. Furthermore, mechanisms behind acquired cabazitaxel resistance were explored.
Methods
Mice were subcutaneously inoculated with 22Rv1 cells and treated with surgical castration (n = 7), abiraterone (n = 9), cabazitaxel (n = 6), castration plus abiraterone (n = 8), castration plus cabazitaxel (n = 11), or vehicle and/or sham operation (n = 23). Tumor growth was followed for about 2 months or to a volume of approximately 1000 mm3. Two cabazitaxel resistant cell lines; 22Rv1‐CabR1 and 22Rv1‐CabR2, were established from xenografts relapsing during cabazitaxel treatment. Differential gene expression between the cabazitaxel resistant and control 22Rv1 cells was examined by whole‐genome expression array analysis followed by immunoblotting, immunohistochemistry, and functional pathway analysis.
Results
Abiraterone treatment alone or in combination with surgical castration had no major effect on 22Rv1 tumor growth, while cabazitaxel significantly delayed and in some cases totally abolished 22Rv1 tumor growth on its own and in combination with surgical castration. The cabazitaxel resistant cell lines; 22Rv1‐CabR1 and 22Rv1‐CabR2, both showed upregulation of the ATP‐binding cassette sub‐family B member 1 (ABCB1) efflux pump. Treatment with ABCB1 inhibitor elacridar completely restored susceptibility to cabazitaxel, while treatment with AR‐antagonists bicalutamide and enzalutamide partly restored susceptibility to cabazitaxel in both cell lines. The cholesterol biosynthesis pathway was induced in the 22Rv1‐CabR2 cell line, which was confirmed by reduced sensitivity to simvastatin treatment.
Conclusions
Cabazitaxel efficiently inhibits prostate cancer growth despite the high expression of constitutively active AR‐V7. Acquired cabazitaxel resistance involving overexpression of efflux transporter ABCB1 can be reverted by bicalutamide or enzalutamide treatment, indicating the great clinical potential for combined treatment with cabazitaxel and anti‐androgens.
Summary Background Docetaxel plus prednisone is standard first-line chemotherapy for men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. Aflibercept is a recombinant human fusion protein that ...binds A and B isoforms of VEGF and placental growth factor, thereby inhibiting angiogenesis. We assessed whether the addition of aflibercept to docetaxel and prednisone would improve overall survival in men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer compared with the addition of placebo to docetaxel and prednisone. Methods VENICE was a phase 3, multicentre, randomised double-blind placebo-controlled parallel group study done in 31 countries (187 sites). Men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer, adequate organ function, and no prior chemotherapy were treated with docetaxel (75 mg/m2 intravenously every 3 weeks) and oral prednisone (5 mg twice daily) and randomly allocated (1:1) to receive aflibercept (6 mg/kg) or placebo, intravenously, every 3 weeks. Treatment allocation was done centrally via an interactive voice response system, using a computer-generated sequence with a permuted-block size of four and stratified according Eastern Co-operative Group performance status (0–1 vs 2). Patients, investigators, and other individuals responsible for study conduct and data analysis were masked to treatment assignment. Aflibercept or placebo vials were supplied in identical boxes. The primary endpoint was overall survival using intention-to-treat analysis. This is the primary analysis of the completed trial. The study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov , number NCT00519285 Findings Between Aug 17, 2007, and Feb 11, 2010, 1224 men were randomly allocated to treatment: 612 to each group. At final analysis, median follow-up was 35 months (IQR 29–41) and 873 men had died. Median overall survival was 22·1 months (95·6% CI 20·3–24·1) in the aflibercept group and 21·2 months (19·6–23·8) in the placebo group (stratified hazard ratio 0·94, 95·6% CI 0·82–1·08; p=0·38). We recorded a higher incidence of grade 3–4 gastrointestinal disorders (182 30% vs 48 8·0%), haemorrhagic events (32 5·2% vs ten 1·7%), hypertension (81 13% vs 20 3·3%), fatigue (97 16% vs 46 7·7%), infections (123 20% vs 60 10%) and treatment-related fatal adverse events (21 3·4% vs nine 1·5%) in the aflibercept group than in the placebo group. Interpretation Aflibercept in combination with docetaxel and prednisone given as first-line chemotherapy for men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer resulted in no improvement in overall survival and added toxicity compared with placebo. Docetaxel plus prednisone remains the standard treatment for such men who need first-line chemotherapy. Funding Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.
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