A mutation of a gene called the HOXB13 was recently found
to be associated with prostate cancer but untested in
the real world. This gene is related to how the prostate grows
and can certainly affect how cancer can grow within the prostate gland.
What we did in our study was we took 4,000 subjects
We had biopsied them to determine if they had prostate cancer or not
and we tested this mutation.
What we found was some very striking
data. Number one it is a rare mutation but,
although it's very rare, it has a highly powerful effect
on the patients with the mutation, and that patients who
do have it, have up to a fourteen-fold increase in
risk of developing prostate cancer, especially in the younger men
and especially in the men with a family history of the disease. So it's a ---
it'll become a very important tool in
detecting and screening for prostate cancer using a genetic test.
So in the future, we hope to incorporate
this genetic test, and other tests that we're working on
in our Prostate Cancer Risk Calculator, at prostaterisk.ca
and what that risk calculator will do, will take
the PSA value, which is still a good test for prostate cancer
we'll take other risk factors, and in addition
it will take your genetic make-up, with the HOXB13 being
one of them, and we'll be able to better evaluate and estimate
an individual's risk for prostate cancer.