The Wall Street Journal-20080117-Prostate Cancer Tied To Five-Gene Combo
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Prostate Cancer Tied To Five-Gene Combo
Associated Press
Scientists have taken a key step toward understanding the cause of prostate cancer, finding that a combination of five gene variants sharply raises the risk of the disease. Added to family history, they accounted for nearly half of all cases in a study of Swedish men.
The discovery is remarkable not just for the big portion of cases it might explain, but also because this relatively new approach -- looking at combos rather than single genes -- may help solve the mystery of many complex diseases.
It also might lead to a blood test to predict who is likely to develop prostate cancer. These men could be closely monitored and perhaps offered hormone-blocking drugs like finasteride to try to prevent the disease.
The Swedish results must be verified in other countries and races, where the gene variants, or markers, may not be as common. Researchers already have plans to look for them in U.S. men. Unfortunately, the markers do not help doctors tell which cancers need treatment and which do not -- they turned out to have nothing to do with the aggressiveness of a tumor, only whether a man is likely to develop one.
The study was led by doctors at Wake Forest University in Winston- Salem, N.C., and involved Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Results were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
It involved 2,893 men with prostate cancer and 1,781 similar men who did not have the disease. Sweden was chosen because the population is so ethnically similar and well suited to gene studies.
