Autophagy: a stumbling block of androgen inhibition to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia or prostate cancer

inhibitor 3-methyladenine (3-MA) for 24 h, the apoptosis rate in AD condition dramatically increased to 7.18% ± 2.44% (P < 0.001), which could contribute to the volume shrinkage of the prostate effectively. Altogether, the results suggested the autophagy blockade might be a promising approach to reducing more prostate volume via apoptotic activity enhancement in prostatic epithelial cells. This work is technically sound and demonstrates the effectiveness of a combination therapy for treating BPH using 5-ARI and an autophagy inhibitor for the first time. In addition to this study, Liu et al.4 divided 96 paraffin-embedded BPH tissue samples into 5α-reductase inhibitor administration group and matched control group. Through careful IHC analysis, they found that the autophagic core machineries Beclin-l and LC3 expression in the patients who had taken 5α-reductase inhibitor were significantly higher compared with that in the control group (P < 0.05), verifying the elevated autophagy activity after androgen ablation.