Patients with prostate cancer and BRCA2 mutations need urgent treatment

Men diagnosed as having prostate cancer need to be treated quickly and aggressively with surgery or radiotherapy rather than put under active surveillance if they have inherited the BRCA2 mutation, a study has found.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on 8 April,1 found that prostate cancers spread more quickly and were more often fatal in men who had the BRCA2 mutation. Current NHS guidelines for prostate cancer recommend that men with localised prostate cancer should be placed under active surveillance unless their cancer is high risk.2

According to the study authors, their findings indicate that men with …