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• international
• Science and Technology
• United States
• Health and Medicine
• Personalities
• 01 / 17 / 2010

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A genetic mutation could become an indicator of the aggressiveness of prostate cancer, thus contributing to fight the disease effectively reports the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Investigators of the School of Medicine of the University of Wake Forest, in North Carolina, evaluated 4,849 cases of aggressive prostate cancer and 12,205 cases of slow cancer growth.

 As a result, they found that among people with the genetic mutation, the probabilities of suffering an aggressive tumour were 26 percent higher.

 The study will let people know how its development goes, from the first stages of the illness, and apply an early and effective treatment to fight the disease.

 "In the beginning, it is a test to demonstrate that there are variants in the genome influencing in the different types of prostate cancer", the main author of the study Jianfeng Xu states.

 Although the doctor admitting this discovery can have a limited clinical usefulness, he hopes the study of other genetic varieties will contribute to predict the aggressiveness of the prostate tumour.

Source: PL