Biden Has Aggressive Form of Prostate Cancer, Doctors Find

Former President Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, a spokesman said Sunday. "The president and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians," the statement said, the New York Times reports. The diagnosis on Friday followed the discovery of a small nodule on his prostate, which led to an evaluation. The cancer cells have spread to the bone, per the AP. "While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease," the spokesman said, "the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management."

Biden's personal office said he was checked after experiencing "increasing urinary symptoms." Prostate cancers are assigned a number called a Gleason score that assesses, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells compare with normal cells, per the AP. The former president's score of 9 indicates his cancer is among the most aggressive. Metastasized cancer like Biden's 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. But as Biden's office suggested, prostate cancers need hormones to grow and thus can be treated by depriving the tumors of hormones. Biden, 82, left office in January as the oldest person to ever be president. (More Joe Biden stories.)