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Prostate Cancer Predisposition

Researchers in Australia have implemented genetic testing to uncover metastatic prostate cancer patients who might benefit from a particular treatment, the Financial Review reports.

It adds that Kinghorn Cancer Centre's Anthony Joshua got the idea to implement this testing in Australia from a talk he heard at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago a few years ago. Similar to what those researchers subsequently reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, Joshua and his colleagues found that about 10 percent of men with metastatic prostate cancer in Australia have genetic mutations that predispose them to the disease, the Financial Review adds.

"I want to provide cutting-edge medical care and if 10 or 11 per cent of my patients could benefit from a certain drug, I want to give them that drug," Joshua tells the Financial Review. It adds that these men might benefit from PARP inhibitor treatment.

His colleague Allan Spigelman, director of Cancer Genetics at St Vincent's, notes that how Medicare in Australia covers genetic testing differs for breast and ovarian cancer versus prostate cancer. He argues that they should be covered similarly, according to Financial Review.

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