Scientists have identified several genetic risk factors for prostate cancer, shedding new light on the cause of a leading worldwide cancer killer among men that hits U.S. blacks especially hard.
‘The importance of it is that this is the first real evidence of the genetic basis of prostate cancer,’ said Dr. Brian Henderson, dean of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and one of the researchers of the study released on Sunday.
‘It gives us the first real insight we’ve had into the cause of this disease and how we might do something about it,’ Henderson added.
Source: Yahoo! News
This has important implications for researchers and will likely to lead to improved ways to predict who is at risk.
Chromosome 8 was implicated by Harvard researchers last August. I am still predicting the day when urologists will be performing prophylactic prostatectomies similar to the removal of breast for women at high risk of developing breast cancer.