Dr. Charles Ryan on Abiraterone Acetate in Elderly mCRPC Patients

Charles Ryan, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Urology, Department of Medicine, Program Leader, Genitourinary Medical Oncology at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer at the Univeristy of California San Francisco, discusses abiraterone acetate in elderly chemotherapy naive patients with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

Many elderly patients, which is definded as those 75 years and older, are deemed unfit for chemotherapy or refuse it, says Ryan. To better understand their non-chemotherapy treatment options, a subset analysis was conduced on a total of 350 elderly patients with mCRPC treated with either abiraterone-prednisone or prednisone alone.

The study found that patients treated with abiraterone-prednisone had significant improvements in overall and radiographic progression-free survival versus those with prednisone alone. These results were similar to those in younger patients.

There were more toxicities with the elderly patient population than the younger patient population, but they did not prevent the use of this therapy in those over 75.