Prostate Cancer Risk Identified by Genetics

What exactly does having 4 or 5 bad genes mean to you? A study found patients with variants of these genes have a four to five times chance of prostate cancer over patients that did not have them. According to the Times article, “Nearly half of the cases of prostate cancer among the approximately 5,000 men in the study could be attributed to the five gene regions and a family history.” The implication, at the least, is to get one genetics test in your lifetime. The report by William B. Isaacs, professor of urology and oncology at John Hopkins, describes “Those at high risk because of their genetics might then choose to start prostate cancer screening earlier than the usual age of about 50.” On the future of implications of the field of genetic screening, and on medicine in general, “It’s the boutique medicine of the future…We can know what diseases we will have to face in the rest of our lives”, quoting Dr. Peter C. Albertsen, prostate cancer specialist at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Jianfeng Xu from Wake Forest University School of Medicine had more conservative estimates for the discovery of the genes. While having one of the variants of the gene only increased the risk moderately, having several of the variants compounded the risk, “…the risks added together so that man who had most or all of the variants ended up with a probability of prostate cancer that was significant.” Compounding the fact of having all 5 of the genes along with family history of the cancer increased the patient’s risk of developing cancer by ten times. What we can expect from knowing of future illness through reading our genes is something new and at the same time frightening. Time is relative to our expectations, so when we know how long we have left to live, does that help or hurt us? The January 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine will feature top leaders in their prospective fields on the current research of prostate cancer. source doc: nytimes

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