Men's Health

Repealing the IOASE would severely curtail the health care options for hundreds of thousands of prostate cancer patients and their families who depend on access to comprehensive, integrated urologic services of the highest quality.

Studies examining the post-prostatectomy effects of phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitors and those discussing active surveillance are among the key papers in localized prostate cancer to be presented at this year's AUA annual meeting, according to Leonard G. Gomella, MD.

Prostate cancer will not go away if we simply stop looking for it.

African-American and European-American men at high risk of prostate cancer have greater odds of being diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease if they have vitamin D deficiency, researchers from Chicago’s Northwestern Medicine and the University of Illinois at Chicago reported in a recently published study.

New products and services from Lumenis, ITelagen, Mission Pharmacal, PatientPoint, and HealthTronics IT Solutions.

Urologists on Twitter criticized high-intensity focused ultrasound and in some instances even mocked the treatment.

Drugs and devices in the pipeline from MEI Pharma, Bayer HealthCare, Merck, Pfizer, and Minomic International.

Urologists discuss their approaches to preventing post-prostate biopsy infection, including rectal swabs and antibiotic prophylaxis.

The Prostate Health Index (phi), a noninvasive blood test its developer says is three times more specific in detecting prostate cancer than PSA, is now available nationwide.

Analyses of serial magnetic resonance imaging and three-dimensional renderings of those images provide proof of principle for using convective thermal heating to ablate prostate tissue, and early evidence suggests the efficacy and potential clinical advantages of using this novel technology to treat BPH, said first author Lance A. Mynderse, MD, at the European Association of Urology annual congress in Stockholm, Sweden.

Intralesional injection of collagenase clostridium histolyticum (CCH [XIAFLEX]) improves the physical and psychological aspects of Peyronie’s disease in men regardless of erectile dysfunction severity and whether they have a history of prior treatment or prostatectomy, according to a recent study.

Focal therapy has been promoted as a minimally morbid option for men with localized low-risk prostate cancer who nevertheless want their disease treated. Opponents of focal therapy note the heterogeneity and multifocal nature of prostate cancer, the difficulty of accurately targeting and destroying an index tumor with focal therapy, and the unknown biologic potential of the tumor.

Researchers have come up with a potential blood-based biomarker that can identify men with castration-resistant prostate cancer who are not likely to respond to enzalutamide (XTANDI).

A new study has found that for men 65 years of age and older, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy and open prostatectomy have similar rates of complications, providing further evidence that outcomes between the two procedures are not significantly different.

Is inflammation a potential target for the treatment of BPH? New research being presented at the 2014 AUA annual meeting may help answer this question.

Research in stone disease and minimally invasive surgery will also make its mark at the Society for Pediatric Urology annual meeting, which runs concurrently with the first 3 days of the AUA meeting.

Our traditional thinking about sex steroids is being challenged.

The safety of testosterone replacement therapy has been the subject of two recently published studies, which were followed by a January 2014 FDA announcement that the agency is investigating the risk of stroke, heart attack, and death in men taking TRT. Additional data on the safety of TRT, including its use in men following radical prostatectomy, will be presented at the AUA meeting, said John J. Mulcahy, MD, PhD.

Research in advanced prostate cancer is largely focused on newer agents for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, including abiraterone acetate (ZYTIGA), enzalutamide (XTANDI), radium Ra 223 dichloride (Xofigo), and the immunotherapy sipuleucel-T (Provenge).

A number of studies at the 2014 AUA annual meeting will indicate that male infertility is a harbinger of other diseases, specifically suggesting “linkage to all-cause mortality, psychiatric disorders, morbidity, and offspring birth defect risk,” said James M. Hotaling, MD, assistant professor of surgery in the division of urology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Drugs and devices in the pipeline from Astellas Pharma, Medivation, Repros Therapeutics, Metamark Genetics, Argos Therapeutics, S1 Biopharma, Ipsen, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, Antigen Express, Generex Biotechnology, Veloxis Pharmaceuticals, and Absorption Pharmaceuticals.

New products and services from Accuray, Cook Medical, OPKO Health, Intuitive Surgical, Skipta, Mauna Kea Technologies, and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

This list of U.S.-based National Institutes of Health trials is derived from the NIH’s database and includes phase I-IV hypogonadism and BPH trials that are currently recruiting participants.

About one-fourth of men with slow-growing prostate cancer who undergo active surveillance drop out of the program, according to findings from a relatively small European study.

The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and the American Academy of Ophthalmology have jointly issued an educational update about cataract surgery complications associated with systemic alpha-blockers based on the recent publication of two studies.