Androgen Deprivation Therapy for Prostate Cancer: Focus on Cognitive Function and Mood
Reiss AB; Gulkarov S; Pinkhasov A; Sheehan KM; Srivastava A; De Leon J; Katz AE
Medicina2023-12-30
Summary (paraphrased)
This review surveys how androgen deprivation therapy affects cognition, mood, and quality of life in prostate cancer patients. It reports physiological correlates of ADT including reduced white-matter integrity and impaired hypothalamic function from testosterone lowering or androgen-receptor blockade, and notes that comparative gene analysis found more than 30 genes shared between ADT-treated prostate cancer patients and Alzheimer's patients, suggesting overlapping mechanistic ground. The authors walk through neurocognitive testing evidence and call for deeper study of the links between hormonal disruption, cognitive deficits, and mood disturbance.
Why it’s in the systems review
ADT is the cleanest human parallel to pharmacologic androgen silencing, and this review documents its central phenotype: cognitive decline plus mood disturbance, with structural and molecular correlates — a direct precedent for treating PFS/PSSD brain fog and anhedonia as consequences of androgen signaling loss rather than as separate psychiatric entities. The shared-gene signal with Alzheimer's disease also gives the corpus a mechanistic hook for why androgen-axis disruption converges on neurocognitive pathology. It is the anchor record for the "androgen-silencing parallel" in this axis.
Related records
- VideoPSSD Discord pick
The unlikely duo raising awareness about cancer treatment side effects | Australian Story
ABC News In-depth · 29:28
This ABC Australian Story episode (July 2025) follows two Australians — Tim, a writer living with metastatic prostate cancer on ten years of androgen deprivation therapy, and Liz, widow of Craig — campaigning for awareness of ADT's devastating side effects…
DISC-V022025-07-16PFSPSSDPSSD Discord picks - Peer-reviewed paper
Androgen-targeting therapeutics mitigate the adverse effect of GnRH agonist on the risk of neurodegenerative disease in men treated for prostate cancer
Branigan GL; Torrandell-Haro G; Soto M; Gelmann EP; Vitali F; Rodgers KE; Diaz Brinton R · Cancer Medicine
A retrospective cohort analysis of roughly 1.8 million men with prostate cancer in a US claims database (about 210,000 meeting inclusion criteria, ~6.4 years mean follow-up) examined how different classes of androgen-targeting drugs related to…
MECH-0262022Systems review · Oct 2026