This forum is for the discussion of anything to do with Prostate Cancer. There are only four rules:
No fundraisers, no commercials (although it is OK to recommend choices of treatment or medical people based on your personal research; invitations to participate in third-party surveys are also acceptable, provided there is no compensation to YANA);
No harvesting e-mail addresses for Spam;
No insults or flaming - be polite and respectful at all times and understand that there may be a variety of points of view, all of which may have some validity;
Opinions are OK, but please provide as much factual evidence as possible for any assertions that you are making
Failure to abide by these simple rules will result in the immediate and permanent suspension of your posting privileges.
Since this is an International Forum, please specify your location in your post.
Did you find that Don's post was inaccurate because he used the term 'kidney failure' rather than "acute kidney injury"? I, myself, wondered if the two terms are synonymous, so I Googled them and it turns out that Acute Kidney Injury has replaced kidney failure as the accepted definition.
It would have made no differnce if Don had said .... there is an increased risk of kidney failure if one takes lupron or other such anti androgen drugs. or .... there is an increased risk of acute kidney injury (AKI) if one takes lupron or other such anti androgen drugs. my answer would be the same - that is NOT what trhe study says.
Let me try this again. You found Don's post to be lacking because he did not specify that the study only involved men with newly diagnosed non-metastatic cancer, meaning not cancer patients in general.
No Jack. It was because he was extrapolating the particular to the general.
Here we had a study that look at a group of men, chosen specifically to meet the criteria of the study, whose kidney health was compared with another group of men. In making this comparison, the authors of the study had noted that there was an association between a small but statistical increase in AKI amongst the men who had ADT which was not apparent in the men who did not have ADT. The association between increased levels of AKI was greater where multiple therapies had been applied. As we all know correlation is not the same as causation, so it could not be said that the ADT CAUSED the AKI merely that there is an APPARENT CORRELATION between ADT and AKI. There was no clinical value in this observation.
Given these broad nature of these findings, the generalised statement that .... there is an increased risk of kidney failure if one takes lupron or other such anti androgen drugs. which implies causation of AKI by Lupron specifically and “other such anti-androgen drugs” is simply not supported by the study.
In commenting on Don’s original post I was hoping to emphasise the nature of scientific studies. They very rarely draw the firm conclusions that the popular press headlines. This one doesn’t either.
Terry, Had you said all that in the first place I would not have asked any inane questions. LOL
Dr. Meyers echoes your explanation in a follow-up comment to his July 24 video. Based on his extensive research background, he concludes that survey research (of which the ADT/kidney injury study I believe is one) can NEVER (his emphasis) prove causal link, but only association.
