This may be of interest -- almost 2 years ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which eventually turned out (after tests at Hopkins) to fall into the "insignificant" indolent form common in older men (it has been found that 40-50% of men in their 60s and up to 80 % of men in their 80s have some cancer in their prostates, based on autopsy studies, but in most cases they never know and it never progresses). I am currently enrolled in a study at Hopkins which is monitoring us for any progression over time, the goal tbeing to develop better predictors for aggressive vs. indolent disease.

I am also under the care of a medical oncologist who specializes in PC and who closely follows the literature on emerging adjunctive therapies since diet and lifestyle play such a large role in PC (and other cancers). One research finding is that suppression of COX-2 is linked to a slowing or halting of PC proliferation and recurrence (there is quite a bit of literature on this). Consequently this oncologist prescribes Celebrex to his PC patients who are able to tolerate the drug and who have no cardiac issues. I take 200 mg/dy although 400 mg/dy is often recommended.

My PC is really a non-issue now, my last two follow-up biopsies were unable to find any cancer and according to the PI, based on 10 years' of study data, I have less than a 5% chance of any progression.

However I was diagnosed with HNC three weeks ago and the doctors at Hopkins and Sloan both compared CT scans taken in October (when it was misdiagnosed as a neck abscess) to those taken last week and say there has been minimal progression in 8 months (however it was already stage IV in October, alas!). I wonder if the Celebrex plus the other anti-prostate-cancer measures I have taken in past two years have had some small impact on the (much more serious) SCC disease as well.

I intend to continue to take the Celebrex as long as I can swallow the capsules!

Barry Cooper