Just to show how not everything in trials is a known quantity or guarantees your safety. This comes from Howard Hansen a patient whom has done chemo and many other treatments in his journey with PCa and is the moderator of HRPCa, a group anyone herein can join, too.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------His post is this:
I posted this earlier, but recently Nick Vogelzang, MD was reviewing the abstracts from ASCO and he said this paper demonstrated that weekly taxotere is not a good choice which I’ll bet was based on the greater number of deaths in their weekly taxotere (36mg/m2 for 3 of 4 weeks) as compared to 3 weekly 75mg/m2 every 21 days. See the table below. Both arms were with DN-101. The ASCENT2 trial was ended early due to the number of deaths.
So does higher dose make a difference in survival? Does use of DN-101 (somehow highly concentrated calcitriol) Make a difference. I wish I had an answer, but I don’t, so you will have to take this abstract for what it is.
I’ve always used calcitriol as the little .5mcg pill, not this new formulation called DN101. This was also with weekly taxotere 30mg/m2 3 weeks out of 4. I believe it has extended my survival, but I am but one person. The references for calcitriol and taxotere are at http://www.hrpca. org/chhdpc. htm ... I may have to revise this based on this new information. This paper was not about 2nd line chemotherapy which is the way I have used it and my dose was lower.
It would nice to see a clinical trial with true apples to apples comparison.
Take care (Howard)------------------------------------------------------------------------------