Researchers believe that genetics and traditional screening techniques could play a role in predicting the risk of prostate cancer in younger men. "This is a potential opportunity to combine PSA [prostate-specific antigen] testing with genetic markers to determine who has significant prostate cancer. It could be a combination of age and family history that could help us determine who should be tested with PSA and a panel of genetic markers,” stated study author Kathleen Cooney, M.D., professor of hematology/oncology and division chief of hematology/oncology at the University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School (Ann Arbor, MI, USA).

Researchers looked for 14 different gene mutations in 754 men age 56 and younger with prostate cancer. The men were enrolled in the Prostate Cancer Genetics Project at U-M. Researchers also looked at 1,163 older men with prostate cancer and 2,713 men without prostate cancer. The study, which was presented June 2010 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, held in Chicago, IL, USA, discovered that the younger men carried more of these genetic mutations. Moreover, 30% of the younger men had aggressive prostate cancer and 41% of these men had at least one first-degree relative with prostate cancer.

"Early onset prostate cancer has a strong genetic component, which we saw in this study. The genetic variants we looked at here are likely not the best indicators. Our next step is to look more widely for common genetic variants among this group of men,” Dr. Cooney stated.

The researchers continue to enroll men in this study. They will next examine the genome of a larger population of men with early onset prostate cancer to find common mutations that may be linked to the disease.

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University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School