Prostate cancer treatment could be transformed by the discovery that it is actually five different diseases.
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Prostate Cancer UK, which carried out the research, said it could help individuals better understand their risk of developing prostate cancer and help them make an informed decision about whether or not to have a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test.
In the United Kingdom, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men registering approximately 41,700 cases every year.
These 5 types were discovered from the samples of cancerous and healthy tissues that are collected from two hundred and fifty men.
“Our exciting results show that prostate cancer can be classified into five genetically-different types”, said study lead Dr. Alastair Lamb.
But the difficulty in identifying the aggressive type means many men with the so-called “pussycat” form are subjected to painful and unnecessary treatments that can cause side-effects such as incontinence and impotence – and some men with the more unsafe “tiger” version may not get the powerful drugs they need.
“The next step is to confirm these results in bigger studies and drill down into the molecular “nuts and bolts” of each specific prostate cancer type”. There are around 10,800 deaths from the disease each year in the UK.
MRI provides the best picture of primary prostate cancer, but ordinary MRI (left) must be enhanced with diffusion weighted (center) or dynamic contrast enhanced (right) technologies to give the optimum view of the tumor. Scientists from Cancer Research UK and Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge conducted the study. However, Mason added that now there is no proper way to distinguish them.
But much larger trials are still needed to be certain of these early results.
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“This could mean more effective treatment, helping save more lives and improve the quality of life for thousands”. “This research confirms just how crucial this approach is, while revealing that the disease and how we categorise its variations will be more complex than originally thought”.
