Hormone therapy

How it works

Your body naturally makes testosterone, which has many functions in your body including how your prostate gland grows. By having injections or taking tablets, the levels of testosterone in your body is reduced, shrinking your tumour. In rare cases, you might be offered surgery to remove your testicles.

Suitability

Lots of people are suitable for hormone therapy, because it can be prescribed in lots of different ways, depending on your cancer.

Localised (early) prostate cancer:

Hormone therapy can shrink your tumour and your prostate, making the tumour more accessible. If your tumour is confined within your prostate gland, you might have hormone therapy before radiotherapy (external beam or brachytherapy).

Locally advanced prostate cancer:

If your tumour has spread just outside your prostate gland, hormone therapy can also help radiotherapy be more effective. With more advanced cancer, you may continue to take hormone therapy after your procedure to make sure your cancer doesn’t return.

Advanced (metastatic) prostate cancer:

When your prostate cancer has metastasised (spread elsewhere in your body), hormone therapy can slow how quickly it spreads and how big it grows. It can also help manage your symptoms.

Recurrent prostate cancer:

You are likely to be offered hormone therapy if your prostate cancer comes back.

Success rates

Hormone therapy has been shown to be very effective in controlling cancer, especially for advanced cancer.

• Cancer control: Up to 90% of people with advanced prostate cancer, hormone therapy was able to shrink their tumour. However, there isn’t as much data around hormone therapy for earlier stage prostate cancer. Hormone therapy doesn’t work forever and sometimes your cancer can become resistant to the kind of hormone therapy you’re on – in this case, your doctor might suggest a different kind of hormone therapy or a different therapy altogether.

Side effects

It’s common to experience side effects from hormone therapy. Testosterone is needed to get and maintain erections, so impotence is a common side effect of hormone therapy. A 2001 study showed that 69% of men became impotent after hormone treatment. Around 50% of men don’t regain sexual potency after stopping. Some people have likened it to a ‘male menopause’ that happens overnight, rather than over a number of years. Side effects of hormone therapy include:

• difficulty getting an erection (impotence)
• hot flushes and sweating
• feeling tired and weak
• breast tenderness
• tumour flare
• brain fog, during and for a few months after treatment
• loss of strength

If you are on long-term hormone therapy, you may also experience:

• weight gain
• memory problems
• mood swings and depression
• bone thinning (osteoporosis)
• risk of early heart failure

Many men can find these symptoms distressing. If you want to avoid them, The Focal Therapy Clinic offers minimally-invasive treatments that could be right for you. Find out more>>

On the day

You may take your hormone treatment at your GP’s surgery, at home, or in hospital, as a day patient. If you are on tablets, you are able to take these at home and will take them up to 3 times a day, depending on the tablet.

Injected hormone therapies can be done in hospital or by your GP. Sometimes you can do them at home, if you are confident to do so. You might need injections every 4 weeks to 6 months, depending on the medication.

Recovery

How quickly your cancer responds to the hormone therapy is hard to predict. If you are taking hormone therapy to shrink your tumour so another treatment, such as radiotherapy, can be more effective, you might take it for around 6 months. If you are taking it during or after radiotherapy, you might take it for up to 3 years. If you have advanced prostate cancer, you may take hormone therapy for the rest of your life, to manage your disease and symptoms.