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The Effects Of Hormone Therapies On Human Body And Will Further Explore Fatigue

Decent Essays

Traditionally men are expected to be the stronger sex, the breadwinner, the hunter- gatherer, but when it comes to prostate cancer men can feel powerless. Hormone therapies are used to chemically castrate men as a means of treating the cancer through more personalised medicine. However, when the cancer becomes refractory, Docetaxel is used as a first line chemotherapy to treat metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer in combination with Prednisolone. Mr. Smith (pseudonym) was diagnosed with Advanced Metastatic Prostate Cancer which was controlled by Abiraterone Acetate (an androgen biosynthesis inhibitor and works by inhibiting the CYP17 enzyme that is used to feed the cancer) until the cancer started to progress, and was …show more content…

Cytotoxic chemotherapy was first discovered during World War II by Gilman and Philips when they perceived the effect that nitrogen gas (used during WWI) had on the number of human cells proliferating and recognised this as a potential treatment for cancer. From this discovery, biotherapy was born helping to increase our knowledge in how to achieve cell death and tumour control through use of cytokines and monoclonal antibodies (Young et al, 2006). Cancer is often described as unregulated cell growth through a multistep process (Brighton et al, 2005). Brighton (2005) describes the ‘Hallmarks’ of the cancer cell as needing to acquire these six steps in order to develop: ‘self-sufficiency in growth signals, insensitivity to antigrowth signal, avoiding apoptosis, limitless replicative potential, angiogenesis and tumour invasion/ metastasis’. These six Hallmarks of Cancer describe the pathogenesis that a cell undertakes until it develops into a tumour which can then potentially become malignant (Hanahan et al, 2011). While normal cells can control their own proliferation that allows a homeostasis amongst cells, that new cells are born once the old cells have died ensuring that there are enough cells available to fulfil the task at hand. Cancer cells are more neurotic, they interrupt the normal signalling pathway within the healthy cells, and then they begin to grow uncontrollably invading the

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