Close on the heels of the approval by the medical authorities in Europe, a life-prolonging pill for prostate cancer has officially been made a legal drug in the UK, though its wide availability on the NHS might take some time!

While the new pill - abiraterone acetate - has become accessible to the patients only recently, it got a European Union licence two week back. Marketed under the trade name Zytiga, the pill has apparently proved to be effective in prolonging the lifespan of men suffering from advanced prostate cancer.

Going by the results of a Phase III trial - involving 2,000 men with advanced prostate cancer -, patients who were administered the once-a-day Zytiga pill lived 15.8 months on average, in comparison to 11.2 months for their counterparts who were given a placebo "dummy" drug.

According to the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and the Royal Marsden Hospital researchers, who developed abiraterone acetate, the effectiveness of the life-prolonging prostate cancer pill stems from the fact that it essentially blocks the production of testosterone - the male sex hormone that contributes to the disease's growth and spread - in all tissues, including cancer tumours.

Noting that abiraterone acetate gives doctors "another important treatment option," Professor Alan Ashworth - CEO of the ICR - said: "We hope that it will play a part in one day turning prostate cancer into a chronic, rather than life- threatening, disease"!