Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his office said on Sunday.
The finding came after the 82-year-old reported urinary symptoms, which led doctors to discover a nodule on his prostate. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said. “The [former] president and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
Photo: Reuters
Prostate cancers are graded for aggressiveness based on the Gleason score. The scores range from 6 to 10, with 8, 9 and 10 prostate cancers behaving more aggressively. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.
When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasized cancer is much harder to treat than localized cancer, because it can be hard for drugs to reach all the tumors and completely root out the disease.
However, when prostate cancers need hormones to grow, as in Biden’s case, they can be susceptible to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones.
Outcomes have improved in recent decades and patients can expect to live with metastatic prostate cancer for four or five years, said Matthew Smith, director of the Genitourinary Oncology Program at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
“It’s very treatable, but not curable,” Smith said. “Most men in this situation would be treated with drugs and would not be advised to have either surgery or radiation therapy.”
Many political leaders sent Biden their wishes for his recovery.
US President Donald Trump, a longtime political opponent, posted on social media that he was saddened by the news and “we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, said on social media that she was keeping him in her family’s “hearts and prayers during this time.”
“Joe is a fighter — and I know he will face this challenge with the same strength, resilience, and optimism that have always defined his life and leadership,” Harris wrote.
Former US president Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with Biden, his former vice president, lauding his toughness.
“Nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe, and I am certain he will fight this challenge with his trademark resolve and grace,” Obama wrote on social media.
The health of Biden was a dominant concern among voters during his time as president. After a calamitous debate performance in June last year while seeking re-election, Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Harris became the nominee and lost to Trump, a Republican who returned to the White House after a four-year hiatus.
But in recent days, Biden rejected concerns about his age, despite reporting in the new book “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aides had shielded the public from the extent of his decline while serving as president.
In February 2023, Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.
In 2022, Biden made a “cancer moonshot” one of his administration’s priorities with the goal of halving the cancer death rate over the next 25 years. The initiative was a continuation of his work as vice president to address a disease that had killed his older son, Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.
His father, when announcing the goal to halve the cancer death rate, said this could be an “American moment to prove to ourselves and, quite frankly, the world that we can do really big things.”
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