Ng et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the
Ng et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Wang et al. BMC Cancer (2015) 15:Page 2 ofBackground Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most commonly registered male cancer and the third leading cause of cancer deaths for New Zealand men, making up 27.3 of all male cancer registrations and 12.6 of male cancer deaths in 2011 [1]. Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) through orchiectomy (surgical castration) or treatment with gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists (medical castration), or anti-androgens is the mainstay of treatment for metastatic prostate cancer. However, ADT is becoming more commonly used in earlier stages of the disease, particularly as an adjunct to radiation therapy in high-risk localised or locally advanced disease. Anlotinib web survival advantage has been shown in both of these situations [2, 3]. Studies also indicate that ADT together with radiation therapy have a better survival advantage compared to ADT alone especially in patients with locally advanced disease [4]. ADT is also used for the treatment of biochemical relapse (rise in prostatespecific antigen level) after the failure of primary treatment, and as primary therapy for men with localized disease who are unable or unwilling to undergo radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy [2, 5]. Use of ADT, both GnRH agonists and orchiectomy, results in hypogonadism, which is associated with multiple adverse effects including loss of libido, hot flushes, erectile dysfunction, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, anaemia, fatigue and accelerated bone loss [2, 6?]. ADT has been associated with an increased risk of bone fracture, as reported in retrospective cohort studies [10?2]. However, few studies have examined the effect of different types of ADT or PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28499442 whether anti-androgens have a different effect on fracture rates. In addition, fractures are known to be associated with increased mortality risk [13, 14], and thus may be an important marker of prognosis in older men with PCa. We aimed to examine the fracture burden of ADT in New Zealand PCa population. We also evaluated the association between different types of ADT and risk of fractures requiring hospitalisation in the New Zealand PCa population, and the subsequent mortality risk following a fracture. Methods We identified 26,237 men diagnosed with PCa PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28154141 between 2004 and 2012 from the New Zealand Cancer registry (NZCR, http://www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/ national-collections-and-surveys/collections/new-zealandcancer-registry-nzcr). NZCR has a collection of data since 1948 on all new cases of malignant cancers excluding squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma of the skin. The NZCR identifies individuals by their National Health Index (NHI) number, a unique identifier assigned to every person at first contact with the NZhealth system. Patients with PCa morphology not consistent with adenocarcinoma (n = 89), and those diagnosed before the age of 40 were excluded (n = 7). We.