New research has found that a gene mutation could radically alter the chances of survival for men with prostate cancer, a scientific report said Wednesday.

Men who carry a mutated form of the BRCA2 gene seem to succumb to this type of cancer a decade earlier than those with a more common version of the gene, according to the report of the New Scientist on its website.

Screening for the BRCA2 gene mutation, which is better known for raising the risk of breast cancer, could improve the outcome of prostate tumor treatment, the report quoted experts at the Icelandic Cancer Registry in Reykjavik, Iceland as saying.

BRCA2 was first identified by researchers in 1995, who then began to understand its effect on breast cancer. Women with mutations in either BRCA2 or the related BRCA1 gene face an up to seven-fold increased risk of breast cancer. And in recent years, scientists have started to piece together how BRCA2 mutations also influence men's health.

Studies have found that men who carry certain variants of BRCA2 face a doubled risk of prostate cancer, and are six times more likely to suffer pancreatic cancer than people with a normal version of the gene.

Researchers at the Icelandic Cancer Registry in Reykjavik decided to see if the BRCA2 mutation had any impact on the progression of prostate cancer once it developed.

The researchers under the leadership of Laufey Tryggvadottir retrieved prostate cancer biopsies that had been taken from 527 patients and deposited in their registry over the past few decades. After analysis of the DNA in these samples, they found that 30 of the men tested positive for a BRCA2 mutation, known as 999del5.

The study showed that men with this mutation had an average survival time of 2.1 years following their cancer diagnosis, a decade shorter than patients with the normal gene, who lived 12.4 years on average.

The new study also revealed that carriers of the inherited gene mutation received their cancer diagnosis at an average age of 69, five years earlier than those free of the mutation, indicating that the cancer developed earlier.

Tryggvadottir suggests that men with a history of BRCA2-related breast cancer in their family begin prostate screening at 45, a few years before the generally recommended age of 50.

People with a faulty version of the BRCA2 gene are more likely to suffer cancer, because the gene encodes for a protein involved in DNA repair, Tryggvadottir explained.