Virus Related to Prostate Cancer

More evidence of the virus-cancer link.

The jury is still out, but this one might be promising in the search for a vaccine.


Scientists Find Virus in Some Prostate-Cancer Patients

A team of scientists in Cleveland and San Francisco said today that they have discovered a new virus among patients who had a rare form of prostate cancer and a particular genetic mutation. ...But the researchers do not know whether the virus causes prostate cancer, infection or any other ailment in humans, they reported at a scientific meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in San Francisco. The virus, called XMRV, could even prove to be harmless. ...Still, finding a virus in even a rare form of prostate cancer intrigues scientists because of growing suspicions that prostate cancer might result from chronic inflammation from infection with some bacterium or virus.

Other viruses are believed to cause certain cancers of the liver and cervix. ...The SMRV virus is closely related to a group of retroviruses found in mice and known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus. (Xenotropic means that the virus crossed species.) Though members of this group can cause disease in animals other than mice, there has been no documented human infection until the report from the researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and University of California at San Francisco.

Prostate cancer is the most frequent cancer of men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men 50 and older in the United States.

Thanks for bringing this thread I learned about this new link to cancer today and I was surprise about the whole issue.

As you know my father has been fighting prostate cancer for years, he prefer treatment over surgery while is costly his old believes will be intact.

Older men have a different way of thinking when it comes with certain issues.

Now what we have learned over the years about cancer and how some types of cancer are incurable even linking them with enzymes.

I wonder if these new link is just another mutation of cancer into a virus or can it be that cancer has been a virus all alone.

I wonder.

Originally posted by marg6043

I wonder if these new link is just another mutation of cancer into a virus or can it be that cancer has been a virus all alone.

I wonder.

Very good question.

need to think about that...