A mixture of Chinese herbs may offer hope to men with prostate cancer that hasn't responded to conventional medicine.

Hundreds or perhaps thousands of men nationally are using the herbs, marketed as PC-SPES, say medical experts. PC stands for prostate cancer and SPES are the first four letters of the Latin word for hope.

The herbs seem to work as well as conventional hormone therapies, which reduce testosterone and arrest the growth of prostate cancer, though with some dangerous side effects, says a new study by California researchers.

But more exciting, they say, is that the herbs halted the growth of cancer for some men who previously had not responded to hormone therapy at all.

"That was very exciting and suggested that this herb product was also working in a non-hormone fashion," says lead author Dr. Eric Small, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

"In that group of patients for whom hormone therapy doesn't work, there are not many alternatives," Small says. Findings appear in tomorrow's Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Hormone therapy is considered a treatment of last resort and usually is begun after men have opted for either surgical removal of the prostate or radiation. Even when effective, it typically works only for several years, until the body adjusts to it and the cancer begins to spread again.

Why PC-SPES works for men who haven't responded to hormone therapy has not been determined yet, Small says. His research has been funded by CaP Cure, a nonprofit group founded by Michael Milken that's devoted to research in prostate cancer.

The American Cancer Society says 180,400 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, and nearly 32,000 will die from the disease.

Small and his colleagues worked with 33 men who had not yet tried hormone therapy, but whose bloods test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) showed abnormal growth in the prostate gland. A score above 4 or a rise in PSA suggests the need for a biopsy, and Small says the men had an average score of 7.9.

The researchers also worked with 37 men who had tried hormone therapy but had found it ineffective. Their average PSA was 60.7, Small says.

In the first group, called hormone-dependent, every man saw his PSA decline 80 percent to 100 percent after taking PC-SPES, an extract from eight Chinese herbs, the study says. For 26 men, the PSA dropped below detectable levels.

The gains stood for the duration of the 57-month study, the researchers add.

However, Small says how long PSAs would remain low needs more study. Some men anecdotally report their PSAs began to rise after a period of using the herbs, much as with hormone therapy, he says.

In any case, the herbs usually are not covered by insurance and would cost more than $400 a month, Small says. By contrast, conventional hormone therapy has a proven track record, while the herbs produce a number of side effects, including life-threatening clots, he says.

In Small's study, three of the 70 participants developed clots, about 4 percent of the group.

"I see no reason to use it instead of hormone therapy," Small says.

It's a different story, though, when hormone therapy doesn't work.

The second group in Small's study, called hormone-independent men -- those who had not responded to hormone therapy -- showed far more interesting and hopeful results from the herbs, he says.

About 54 percent of these men saw more than 50 percent drop in their PSAs, Small says. And, although the drop lasted an average of only four months, he says something non-hormonal in the herbs caused the drop. Further, five of those 37 men have maintained their low PSAs, the study says.

"These are people for whom there really are no alternatives," Small says.

Dr. Aaron E. Katz, an assistant professor of urology at Columbia University who also has studied PC-SPES in advanced prostate cancer patients, says about 80 percent of men with prostate cancer do not respond to conventional hormone therapy, although no one yet knows why.

His studies also have shown that the Chinese herbs offer some hope to these men, Katz says.

The latest research adds to the growing body of evidence that PC-SPES can fight prostate cancer, Katz says.

"It's not something fake," he says. "It's obviously real. With more and more patients involved in studies, obviously we may be able to learn something of real value."

(From HealthScout)