Sometimes, doing nothing may be better than doing something. Such as? Using hormone therapy to treat older men with early-stage prostate cancer, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found the meds don’t promote survival in that patient group.

This contradicts the justification for widespread use, since studies show that adding hormone therapy to surgery or radiation for men with aggressive disease can cut death rates by roughly half. Not surprisingly, many older men prefer the meds to surgery or radiation, when possible, despite potential side effects.

However, no studies show the meds - such as TAP Pharmaceuticals’ Lupron or AstraZeneca’s Zoladex - are beneficial for early-stage disease, says Grace Lu-Yao, the lead author of the JAMA study, and an associate professor and epidemiologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

The JAMA study, in fact, found that hormone therapy isn’t likely to save lives. About 30 percent of patients survived 10 years, whether they took hormones or chose “watchful waiting,” which refers to letting some amount of time pass before medication is tried.

“There needs to be some dsicussion between patient and doctor, and the patient really has to look at all different options,” Lu-Yao tells us. “But we showed there was no survival benefit, especially in patients without high-grade cancer. And remember, there are side effect factors associated with medication. It’s not necessarily better to do some therapy than nothing. It really depends on the outcomes.”

The study reviewed records of about 20,000 Medicare patients with an average age of 77, who had either or surgery or radiation. About 41 percent chose the meds while the rest chose to wait it out. One caveat - docs didn’t randomly assign men to undergo one treatment or another.