Virus May Influence Prostate Cancer

The search for a way to predict if a prostate cancer is will be aggressive or harmless took a step forward recently when researchers at the University of Utah linked the disease, and its severity, to a mouse virus
called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV. The Los Angeles Times reports that the scientists looked for the virus in 200 human prostate cancers and in 100
samples of healthy prostate tissue. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found the virus in 27 percentf the cancerous tissues, but in only
6 percent of the healthy tissues. Wait, there’s more: The virus was most likely to be present in
tumors that are considered more aggressive on the Gleason scale of
malignancy.

Read more in the L.A. Times.