While details surrounding the death of Beau Biden – the 46-year-old son of Vice President Joe Biden – are scare, his case is shedding light on brain cancer cases in the United States and around the world. The politician's son died Saturday night due to the disease, however, the family did not specifically say what type of brain cancer killed the younger Biden.
Experts assume Beau died from glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain cancer, according to a report from Washington Post. The survival median for patients with this condition, classified as grade 4, is 14.6 months following the diagnosis. The diseases kills over 15,000 adults in the United States. But patients who have developed grade 2 or 3 malignancies of glioblastoma can live 10 years or more, according to Brian Alexander from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston in the Washington Post report.
Biden was diagnosed in August 2013 and underwent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Following this, he returned to work in November of 2013, but was back in treatment in the spring of 2014. Experts believe his cancer grew resistant to various therapies.
"That's why you hear these patients have a brain tumor, a primary brain tumor, and they've been given a clean bill of health. But they're never really in a position to have a clean bill of health for the rest of their lives," said Stephanie E. Weiss, MD from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, in a report from Yahoo Health.
Oncologist are still learning about the "genetics of brain tumors" in order to treat them effectively.
Radiosurgery, the most common treatment for brain cancer, has been found to retard the growth of tumors, but it can lead to several side effects and reduce survival rate, experts have learned. Patients who exhibit small brain metastases should refrain from undergoing whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT), advises Jan C. Buckner, MD, a professor of oncology at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, in a report published on OncLive.
"By limiting what we do upfront, we can decrease toxicity," said Jyoti D. Patel, MD, from the ASCO panel.
"What we do upfront is so impactful to patients' quality of life – their ability to live full and contributing lives for years. This method is a new paradigm," Patel added.
"We're still in the infancy of our understanding and ability to treat [brain cancer], but there's a hopeful future," Dr. Weiss admits in the Yahoo report.
