This morning I received the usual hodge podge of alert emails, which I only just got round to checking and nearly fell off my chair when clicking through to one from the FDA that brought me up with a start:

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There's been a lot of news out there lately about obesity and diabetes, as well as the excitement of Dendreon's new vaccine for prostate cancer, Provenge, which was approved last Thursday to much fanfare. 

It's therefore a little shocking to see the FDA's initial safety analysis of hormone therapies, which have been pretty much the bedrock of treatment for early stage prostate cancer for many years, including several are now available as generics:

"Preliminary review suggests an increase in the risk of diabetes and certain cardiovascular diseases in men treated with GnRH agonists."

You can find out more here.  Yikes.

It will be interesting to see how the FDA separated out the effects of natural aging and a sedentary lifestyle from real long term drug effects.

Who knows, but Provenge may well turn out to have other hidden benefits such as less risk for diabetes or stroke, but we won't know until we see more data in the earlier, non-metastatic setting.

Perhaps I'm being cynical, but I can just see some ambulance chasers starting another class action lawsuit…