Androgen Deprivation — Continuous, Intermittent, or None at All?

There is a long history behind the study reported by Crook et al. in this issue of the Journal.¹ In 1941, Huggins and Hodges wrote about the first study of hormonal therapies for metastatic prostate cancer.² It was a remarkable observation: men with painful metastatic prostate cancer had a response to orchiectomy or estrogens, with dramatic symptom relief and declines in a circulating serum biomarker (acid phosphatase). Huggins deservedly was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1966. Few therapeutic advances in prostate cancer occurred from 1941 until the 1970s.In 1971, Andrew Schally and colleagues described the luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone . . .