Former US President Joe Biden diagnosed with 'aggressive' form of prostate cancer

"Although this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-dependent, allowing for effective management" of the disease, Joe Biden's office said in a statement sent to AFP.

Joe Biden left the White House in January after deciding not to run for reelection in the summer of 2024 amid concerns about his health. A book-length investigation is due out Tuesday, chronicling his slow physical and cognitive decline over the course of his term.

The former White House resident was diagnosed Friday. According to the statement, his cancer is a Gleason score 9, which rates the aggressiveness of prostate cancers on a scale of up to 10.

Treatment options

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, accounting for 15% of all male cancers. The prostate is a male gland whose main function is to produce a fluid that is part of semen.

"Prostate cancer is a malignant tumor that generally develops slowly, starting from abnormal prostate gland cells," according to the French Cancer Research Foundation.

Hormone-dependent prostate cancers, like the one affecting Joe Biden, require androgen - a male hormone - to spread and stop growing when it is absent, explains the National Cancer Institute in the United States.

"The President and his family are evaluating treatment options with his doctors," the statement said.

Joe Biden underwent surgery in 2023 for a "small" lesion on his chest, which was later found to be cancerous. During his presidency, he launched a major research and funding initiative "to cure cancer once and for all" with the goal of reducing mortality from the disease by 50% within 25 years.

The issue is personal for the Democrat: his eldest son, Beau Biden, died in 2015 of brain cancer at the age of 46.

Investigation book

The debate over the Democrat's gradual decline during his term was brought back into the spotlight on Saturday with the publication by the media outlet Axios of an audiotape dating from 2023 in which the then-president loses track of important dates in his life.

The investigative book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, due out Tuesday, also tells how the White House hid from the world the growing weaknesses of a president who long clung to his reelection bid.

Joe Biden recently denied experiencing cognitive decline at the end of his term.

"There's no evidence to support that," he told ABC in early May. "After I withdrew from the presidential race, I was president for another six months, and I did a good job. But what scared everyone was that debate."

His health had long been a political issue, and Donald Trump had taken to calling him "Sleepy Joe."

"I know people who are 89, 90, 92, 93 years old, and they're perfectly fine. But Joe wasn't one of them, and he's doing a lot of hiding," the 78-year-old president attacked Friday on his plane returning from the Middle East. "Everyone was holding back, including the press."

Joe Biden had withdrawn from the public eye and kept his distance from the press during his final weeks in office, including a trip to Angola in December during which he appeared to fall asleep in public.