Weight Gain on Hormone Therapy

Younger, thinner, nondiabetic men were more likely to gain weight on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) than older men with comorbidities.

“This is a new finding. We always thought that older, sicker prostate cancer patients were more likely to gain weight on hormonal therapy, but this study shows something different. At present, we don’t have an explanation for this, but our working theory is that younger men have higher baseline levels of testosterone than older, obese, and diabetic men and the magnitude of testosterone decline on hormone therapy might explain the weight gain,” said lead author Daniel Seible, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts.

The retrospective study assessed weight change among 118 men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer assigned to ADT. The primary end point was weight change 1 year after initiation of ADT. The secondary aim was to identify factors associated with weight gain.

Overall, a significant weight gain was found 1 year after starting ADT (P = .0005). Three main risk factors associated with weight gain were:

• Younger age: gain of 5.98 lb for men younger than age 65 versus 1.3 lb for men older than
  age 65
• Body mass index (BMI) <30: 4.36 lb gained for those with BMI <30 versus 0.22 lb for men with BMI 30
• Nondiabetic status: 3.43 lb gained versus 0.57 lb for diabetic men

Another finding was that the more risk factors a patient had at baseline, the greater the weight gain.

In this study, the authors did not measure baseline testosterone levels of subjects, Seible said.

Reference
Seible DM, Gu X, Hyatt A, et al. Identifying men at greatest risk of weight gain from androgen deprivation therapy. J Clin Oncol. 2014;32 (suppl 4). Abstract 80. Presented at: 2014 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium; January 30, 2014; San Francisco, CA.