Leading American and British cancer researchers are urging that all men with advanced prostate cancer strongly consider being tested for inherited gene mutations -- both to help steer their treatment and to alert family members who themselves might be at increased risk for a range of cancers.
This new recommendation, which represents a major change in approach, was prompted by a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers found that almost 12 percent of men with advanced cancer had defects in genes that are designed to fix damage to DNA, compared to 4.6 percent of patients with disease that hadn't spread.
The study involved almost 700 men in the United States and Britain. Researchers looked for mutations in well-known DNA-repair genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, which are typically linked to breast and ovarian cancers, as well as in more obscure genes called CHEK2 and ATM. The most common defects involved the BRCA2 gene. The frequency of the mutations did not differ significantly based on age or family history of prostate cancer.
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