Why John McCain and Jimmy Carter brain tumours had such different outcomes
United States senator died after a year of treatment, whereas former US president beat cancer after four months of therapy; the difference was that McCain had a glioblastoma, whereas Carter had metastatic melanoma treatable by immunotherapy
Deadly brain tumours have challenged both Jimmy Carter and John McCain in recent years, but the two US political icons have had vastly different treatment results.
Arizona senator McCain, who died on Saturday, had announced to the world just a day earlier that he was stopping treatment after a year, while former president Carter was declared cancer-free just four months after he started therapy in 2015.
How could these two men have such opposite outcomes?
The answer, said Dr Ezra Cohen, associate director of Moores Cancer Centre at the University of California, San Diego, has to do with the specific physical and genetic characteristics involved.
Carter’s brain tumour was caused by metastatic melanoma which started in a distant part of the 39th US president’s body and travelled to his brain. McCain’s tumour was a malignancy called a glioblastoma, the most common kind of brain tumour.
