New Info Revises Opinion On Cancer Drug

A prostate cancer drug should be given to NHS patients, a health watchdog has said.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) revised its recommendations on the drug Abiratone after fresh information from the manufacturer, Janssen. Experts have welcomed the draft guidance.

The drug, marketed as Zytiga, can extend the lives of late-stage cancer sufferers by more than three months.

Professor Alan Ashworth, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research, said: "We are delighted by today's decision to allow patients with advanced prostate cancer to receive abiraterone on the NHS.

"This drug was discovered at the Institute of Cancer Research and is the result of more than two decades of dedicated work by our scientists and collaborators.

"In clinical trials of men with advanced prostate cancer who have already tried chemotherapy, it has been shown to extend life by an average of four months and improve quality of life."

Each year around 37,000 men in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer and 10,000 die from the disease. It is the second most common cause of cancer death in men, accounting for 13%.

The Prostate Cancer Charity also welcomed the recommendation, but called for the guidance to be issued across the whole of the UK; Nice covers just England and Wales.

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