Jennifer Matthews: 150 pills.
Glen Bartz: Five at a time, just toss them in the throat, take a gulp of water, and they're gone.
Jennifer Matthews: Each week, over a three-hour stretch, Glen Bartz downs a bottle of highly potent, vitamin D, then he follows it with the chemotherapy drug, Taxotere.
Glen Bartz: When I started the treatment my, PSA was 18.7.
Jennifer Matthews: Four months later, his PSA level, a test to track cancer progression, had dropped to nearly zero.
Muriel Bartz: I was delighted, more than surprised -- just very pleased that his PSA went down that much.
Glen Bartz: I'm elated, and, at the same time .. very relieved.
Jennifer Matthews: In a study out of Oregon Health & Science University, 25 percent of patients showed dramatic drops in their PSA levels. Most had their levels drop by 50 percent.
Dr. Tomasz Beer: Taxotere alone works in about 40 percent of patients, we saw over 80 percent of patients respond to the combination, so we're very encouraged by those earlier results.
Jennifer Matthews: Glen's bone scans are also encouraging. A year and a half after starting treatment, the cancer hasn't spread.
Dr. Tomasz Beer: We really think that the vitamin D is having a biologic effect on the cancer that makes it more susceptible then to the chemotherapy that comes along afterwards.
Jennifer Matthews: Doctors still need to confirm their findings in a larger study but for Glen, the results are already in. This is Jennifer Matthews reporting.
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