" gene seem to succumb to this type of cancer a decade earlier than those with a most common version of the gene."

" gene mutation � which is better known for raising the risk of breast cancer � could improve the outcome of prostate tumour treatment."

" dates back to 1995, when researchers first identified this gene and began to understand its effect on breast cancer. Women with mutations in either "

" face a doubled risk of prostate cancer, and are six times more likely to develop pancreatic cancers than people with a normal version of the gene."

"Laufey Tryggvadottir at the Icelandic Cancer Registry in Reykjavik and her colleagues decided to see if the "

"According to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, prostate cancer strikes one in six men in the US. And Tryggvadottir says that when doctors conduct autopsies of elderly men who have died from a wide range of causes, including traffic accidents, they find cancerous prostate cells in two-thirds of these men."

"But she stresses that only a fraction of men die as a result of prostate tumours: "The big challenge today is how to distinguish between a lethal cancer and a harmless one.""

"Howard Soule of the Prostate Cancer Foundation in Santa Monica, California echoes this view: "It would be helpful to know whose prostate cancer is aggressive and whose cancer is non-lethal.""

"To help address this challenge, Tryggvadottir and colleagues retrieved prostate cancer biopsies that had been taken from 527 patients and deposited in their registry over the past few decades."

"Researchers analysed the DNA in these samples and found that 30 of the men tested positive for a "

". Men with this mutation had an average survival time of 2.1 years following their cancer diagnosis � a decade shorter than patients with the normal gene, who lived 12.4 years on average."

""That's radically different," says Soule, who adds that patients would likely want to know which of these dramatically different prognoses applies to them."

"Moreover,
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