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Castration therapy for prostate cancer often produces an initial clinical response, only to be followed by castration-resistant prostate cancer. An international team of investigators examined whether gut microbes might contribute to castration resistance.
The team studied two strains of mice that are genetically prone to develop prostate cancer and two strains that harbored human prostate cancer cells. As castration resistance developed, two species of gut bacteria that are capable of producing active androgens increased in number. Antibiotic therapy shortly after castration considerably retarded development of castration resistance and reduced tumor volume. Transplantation of feces from mice with castration-resistant prostate cancer or fro…