Hormone Therapy for Prostate Cancer may impair thinking

Men undergoing hormone therapy to treat Prostate Cancer may experience impaired mental function within the first six months that persists for at least a year, a new study suggests.

The risk of memory, learning and concentration problems associated with hormone therapy was greatest for men with a particular gene mutation, researchers from the University of South Florida in Tampa found.

Hormone therapy is used to lower the level of testosterone, thus preventing growth of prostate cancer cells.

"There is something about the treatment that seems to be associated with worse mental function," said lead researcher Brian Gonzalez, a postdoctoral fellow at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

Fuzzy mental functioning was worse for men receiving hormone-depletion therapy. But men with the gene mutation rs1047776 were 14 times more likely to have mental problems related to hormone therapy than men without this mutation