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Has anyone had severe side effects from abiraterone (Zytiga)?
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: May 14, 2025 | Replies (7)Comment receiving replies
When you had “no notable side effects” within a few weeks from Lupron, that should have raised a red flag (as to whether or not it was working).
> what was your testosterone level prior to and since being on Lupron? (Lupron causes suppression of testosterone; if your testosterone doesn’t drop, you won’t have side-effects. If your testosterone does drop, you should/will have side-effects.)
There are various androgen receptor pathway inhibitor (ARPI) hormone therapies to choose from: Zytiga (abiraterone), Erleada (apalutimide), Xtandi (enzalutimide), and Nubeqa (darolutamide). Each has its own unique side-effects; your medical team should find the one that works best for you with the most tolerable side-effects.
FDA-approval dates:
> Zytiga: 2012
> Xtandi: 2013
> Erleada: 2018
> Nubeqa: 2022
Each was designed to be an improvement over the previous ARPI based on side-effects while still being effective treating the disease.
Good luck.
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Zytiga (Abiraterone) was first approved in 2011. Not that the exact year is significant, but there's a gulf between Flutamide and Abiraterone as first-generation ARSIs and the so-called "-lutamides" — Darolutamide (Pfizer), Apalutamide (Janssen), and Enzalutamide (Bayer) — as a family of similar 2nd-generation ARSIs.
It's not a chain of gradual, incremental improvements. Instead, the differences within the -lutamide family are that each is approved for a different, overlapping set of cancer situations (metastatic/non-metastatic, castrate-resistant/castrate-sensitive), has different risk profiles (e.g. Darolutamide has a slightly lower risk of seizures), and was developed or acquired by a different major pharma company.