CORRESPONDENCE LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE LINK TO AUTHOR’S REPLY knowledge to participate in choosing favoured therapies. Sharing decision mak- Cardiovascular toxicities of systemic ing will offer opportunities for patients, enabling them, together with their families treatments of prostate cancer: and friends, to engage with personalized medicine, but this process requires thorough oestrogen to the rescue? acquisition of comprehensive, up-to-date, relevant background data. Syed Imran A. Shah, Hannah C. P. Wilson & Paul D. Abel Syed Imran A. Shah is at the Biochemistry Department at Central Park Medical College, Central Park Housing Scheme, 31 km Ferozepur Road, Kahna Nau, Lahore, In their Review (Cardiovascular toxicities By the early 1990s, reports of paren- Punjab, Pakistan. of systemic treatments of prostate cancer. teral oestrogen administration for prostate Hannah C. P. Wilson is at Imperial NHS Trust, 1 Nat. Rev. Urol. 14, 230–243 (2017)) Veccia cancer (injection or skin patch) had been The Bays, South Wharf Road, St Mary’s Hospital, et al. offer useful insight into current encouraging. A Scandinavian research team London W2 1NY. knowledge concerning cardiovascular com- recruited 915 men into a two-arm study of Paul D. Abel is at South Kensington Campus, plications of oral oestrogen, androgen dep- luteinising-hormone-releasing hormone London, SW7 2AZ, UK . rivation therapy (ADT), and prostate cancer. (LHRH) agonist plus antiandrogens ver- Correspondence to: S.I.A.S. However, we do not share the confidence and sus intramuscular polyestradiol phosphate
[email protected] strength of their assertion that “oestrogens (a synthetic oestrogen). Overall prostate can- doi:10.1038/nrurol.2017.126 are no longer used in patients with prostate cer mortality was equivalent between groups, Published online 8 Aug 2017 cancer owing to the severity of their adverse but cardiovascular morbidity was either events, which include thromboembolic and not reported or slightly increased in the 1.