Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive' form of prostate cancer
FORMER US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, his office announced.
Biden was in a Philadelphia hospital last week, where doctors discovered a 'small nodule' on his prostate that they said required further examination. The former president, 82, had been experiencing urinary symptoms, his office said in a statement Sunday.
The cancer had metastasised to the bone, spokesperson Kelly Scully said in the statement. This is fairly common in patients with advanced prostate cancer, occurring in about 60 per cent of cases, according to the health group Zero Prostate Cancer.
Scully's statement also said that his cancer was 'characterised by a Gleason score of 9.'
The Gleason grading system is used to assess how aggressive a prostate cancer is, with a score of 9 indicating the cancer is very aggressive and likely to grow and spread quickly.
'While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,' Scully said. 'The president and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.'
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Because his cancer is hormone sensitive, it may still respond to hormone therapy, which involves stopping testosterone from being made or reaching cancer cells.
Prostate issues, including cancer, are common in older men. Biden was the oldest serving president in US history.
The cancer news comes as Biden's post-presidential life has been dogged by revelations in a new book about his declining mental faculties during his presidency and aides' efforts to gloss them over.
Since excerpts of the book have been released, Democrats have been debating their role in keeping him as the 2024 presidential nominee despite voter concerns about his age.
The issue of Biden's age has arisen again because of the book's imminent publication as well as the release by Axios of the audio from Biden's 2023 interviews with special counsel Robert Hur, who at the time described Biden as 'an elderly man with a poor memory.'
In July the Biden administration was grappling with questions about frequent visits to the White House by a Parkinson's specialist.
Since leaving office, Biden has kept a low profile, publicly speaking after President Donald Trump's 100 days in office. But as the book's publication nears, Biden has also taken to doing interviews on shows such as ABC's The View, where even in that friendly environment he was asked about his age.
Cancer has been an important issue to Biden. His son Beau died in 2015 after battling brain cancer. And Biden worked on a 'cancer moonshot' initiative during his presidency, working for more research funding to fight cancer. BLOOMBERG
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