Hormone therapy for prostate cancer and the risk of stroke: a 5-year follow-up study

OBJECTIVE To examine the 5-year risk of stroke among patients with prostate cancer (PC) receiving androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in Taiwan, using a population-based dataset. PATIENTS AND METHODS This prospective case-control study used data sourced from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database. The study included 365 patients with PC; 64 (17.6%) received ADT for more than 1 month. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to evaluate the association between ADT and the risk of stroke during the subsequent 5-year follow-up period, after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and hyperlipidaemia. RESULTS In the total sample of 365 patients with PC, 68 (18.6%) patients had strokes during the 5-year follow-up period. These included 11 patients with PC who received ADT (17.2% of all patients who received ADT) and 57 patients who did not receive ADT (18.9% of patients who did not receive ADT). After adjusting for potential confounders, no significant difference in the hazard of stroke was found between patients with PC who did and did not receive ADT (hazard ratio, 1.09; 95% confidence interval, 0.80-1.50). CONCLUSION There was no significant difference in the risk of stroke between ethnic Chinese patients with PC who did and did not receive ADT, after adjusting for potential confounders.