Prostate cancer has become the most common cancer among American men and is second only to lung cancer as a cause of male cancer‐related death.
Several treatment options exist for different stages of prostate cancer including observation, prostatectomy, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy. Hormone therapy has evolved from the use of estrogens to gonadotropin‐releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists and recently, investigational GnRH antagonists.
GnRH receptor agonists such as leuprolide, bruserelin and goserelin have been used for the treatment of prostate cancer. These agonists eventually cause the inhibition of lutenizing hormone production, which in turn causes a suppression of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone, on which continued growth of prostate cancer cells depend.
Several comparative studies of leuprorelin administered as daily injections or monthly depot injections have been reported. Disease progression was prevented in more than 72% of men administered daily leuprorelin, and in 82% to 89% of those receiving monthly depots. Another synthetic GnRH analog, goserelin, has been studied in a similar population of men with daily injections producing partial responses in 60% to 80% of men with previously untreated prostate cancer. Abarelix, a peptide antagonist of GnRH receptor, is also being studied for the treatment of prostate cancer.
The discovery and development of GnRH antagonists may provide an important advance for patients with prostate cancer. Clearly the studies described herein, as well as many others, outline an exciting era of research to define the optimal use of hormonal therapy in prostate cancer.
The developmental pattern of hippocampal mossy fiber (dentate granule cell axon) innervation to the pyramidal cell layer was examined with anterograde transport methods. Injection of 3H-leucine into the dentate gyrus on PN 1 resulted in labeling of the incipient stratum lucidum extending to, but not beyond, the CA3 region on PN 3 and 5. Since destruction of CA3 pyramidal cells on PN 5 results in aberrant mossy fiber innervation to CA1 pyramidal cells (Cook and Crutcher 1985), these results suggest that the presence of mossy fibers in CA1 of the rat represents a neoinnervation (perhaps representing a more primitive pattern of connectivity) and not the persistence of a transient developmental projection.
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