Prostate cancer: soon a saliva test to identify patients at risk?

What if we could know the risks of developing prostate cancer long before it was diagnosed? For the first time, researchers have successfully identified 63 genetic variations in DNA that may increase the disease. According to the study published Monday, June 11 in the newspaper Nature Genetics, they are now working to develop a saliva test to identify high-risk patients.

To begin with, an international team fromCancer Research Institute (ICR) of London created a DNA test capable of determining genetic variants that had previously been very difficult to study and used it to compare the genetic codes of around 140,000 men. Among them, nearly 80,000 suffered from prostate cancer. The researchers were then able to observe 63 DNA variations increasing the risk of prostate cancer. They also identified 1% of men at very high risk among the participants. They had inherited many of the factors responsible for prostate cancer and were six times more likely to develop one than average, the odds dropping from one in eleven to one in two.

Another discovery, and not the least, is that many of these genetic variations are found in areas involved in the communication between cells of the immune system and other cells in the body. Thus, genetic errors in the immune pathways could impact the risk of prostate cancer. This finding could have consequences for potential future immunotherapeutic treatments, the scientists are happy to say.

Next step: the saliva test?

Based on these results, the study’s authors now want to do a DNA test on saliva samples to determine whether preventive treatment could help reduce cases of prostate cancer in patients at greatest risk. “If through DNA we can determine how much risk a man is for developing prostate cancer, the next step now would be to see if we can use it to prevent the disease. We now hope to conduct a small study to determine whether a simple sputum could help identify people at high risk in order to diagnose them early, or even reduce the risks “, details Ros Eeles, Professor of Oncogenetics at IRC London, in a press release.

“We have seen great strides in recent years in understanding the inheritance of prostate cancer and this new study is another step forward that tells us more about why some men develop this disease and others do not. “, explains Professor Paul Workman, director of the ICR.

Prostate cancer is now the most common in men, clearly ahead of that of the lung and colon-rectum. In France, in 66% of cases, it occurs in men aged 65 and over. It represents nearly 26% of all male incident cancers and is the third largest cancer death in male patients. But fortunately, mortality has declined steadily over the past thirty years, largely thanks to improved treatments and access to screening which makes it possible to diagnose prostate cancer at an early stage.