Metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer with a late, complete and durable response to docetaxel chemotherapy: a case report

Although treatment options for men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer have improved in recent years, the outlook for patients remains poor, with overall survival in the region of 2 years. Response rates with chemotherapy are modest and disease progression is usually observed within months of stopping treatment.

We present a case of a 72-year-old White man of British origin with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer with bulky lymphadenopathy and a serum prostate-specific antigen of 295μg/L. He received treatment with docetaxel chemotherapy plus prednisolone, but received just 3 cycles before treatment was stopped due to toxicity and lack of response (prostate-specific antigen was 276μg/L 4 weeks after the last dose and there was a confirmed stable appearance on computed tomography scan). Unexpectedly, at follow-up 4 months later, the patient was clinically better; his prostate-specific antigen had dramatically improved to 4.1μg/L and a re-staging computed tomography scan revealed complete resolution of his bulky lymphadenopathy. At the time, he was receiving a luteinising hormone-releasing hormone analogue but no other disease-modulating treatment. He remains well and asymptomatic, with his most recent serum prostate-specific antigen measuring 0.14μg/L, 18 months after last receiving chemotherapy.

We report a case of complete and durable regression of metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer following palliative chemotherapy which, to the best of our knowledge, has not previously been reported in the literature.