Prof Bertrand Tombal (Saint-Luc Hospital, Brussels, Belgium) and Dr Mark Beresford (Royal United Hospitals Bath, Bath, UK) have a focused discussion looking at overall safety of treatment and current predictive markers within prostate cancer at ESMO 2016.

The experts initially discuss the results from the long-term safety study in patients treated with abiraterone acetate plus prednisone for greater than or equal to 4 years.

The results confirmed that no new safety signals were associated with prolonged treatment with abiraterone acetate plus prednisone in castration-resistant prostate cancer. Additional discussions on patient safety then looked at the question around fatigue in patients with castration-resistance whilst receiving enzalutimide treatment.

The results from this study showed slightly higher levels of fatigue in patients receiving enzalutimide compared with the control arm. It was remarked that this study did not take other factors into account such as cognitive effects of treatment which would be considered within the routine clinical setting. Although overall the results from this study were reassuring.

The post hoc analysis of the ICELAND study were discussed and highlight that patients receiving CAD, CSS and time to PSA (CRPC) progression do not differ according to testosterone levels in the first year of therapy, which may be due to effectiveness of leuprorelin.

Finally, both discussants shared their views on whether NLR is a helpful prognostic indicator of the inflammatory condition in patients and whether there is a predictive correlation with prognosis.

This programme has been supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Janssen Pharmaceuticals (A Johnson & Johnson Company).