Researchers have discovered a possible cause of prostate cancer, a finding they say could result in better forms of treatment or possibly a cure. Doctors had thought prostate cancer was the result of lots of random genetic mutations, but a study involving the University of Michigan Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston suggests prostate cancer begins after specific genes fuse.

This new information may allow doctors to begin to divide prostate cancer -- which is now treated as a single disease -- into different types as they have been treating breast cancer for years. The study is being published in the journal Science

The findings also suggest a similar chromosomal rearrangement could be involved in the development of other solid tumor cancers such as cancers of the lung, breast, colon, ovary, and liver. Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths in men, according to the American Cancer Society.

The ACS estimates in 2005, 232,000 men in the United States will be diagnosed with the disease and 30,350 men will die from it.