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Former U.S. president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his office said Sunday.
Biden was seen last week by doctors after urinary symptoms, and a prostate nodule was found. 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 president and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
Prostate cancers are given a grade called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s score of 9 suggests his cancer is among the most aggressive.
A group of cancer experts say Canadian national screening guidelines are a decade out of date, which is leading to people getting diagnosed later, when they are more difficult to treat.
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 of the tumours 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 tumours of hormones.
Outcomes have improved in recent decades, and patients can expect to live with metastatic prostate cancer for four or five years, said Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Centre.
“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.
U.S. 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.”
Kamala Harris, who served as Biden’s vice-president, 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 U.S. 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.
Biden’s health was campaign focus
The health of Biden, 82, was a dominant concern among voters during his time as president. After a calamitous debate performance in June 2024, while seeking re-election, Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee and lost to Trump, 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 afflicted his older son, Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.
Biden, when announcing his goal of halving the country’s 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.”