Prostate Cancer’s Worst Form Linked to Gene-Influencing Virus

Prostate Cancer’s Worst Form Linked to Gene-Influencing Virus

By Rob Waters
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- A virus has been linked to the most aggressive form of prostate cancer, potentially leading the way to identifying men with the deadliest tumors and pinpointing their treatment.
The discovery, reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involves the XMRV virus, discovered just three years ago, said Ila Singh, an associate professor of pathology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Forty-four percent of men with tumors graded 9 out of 10 for severity on a standard scale had evidence of XMRV, Singh’s study found.