It’s been estimated that close to 40% of us will receive a cancer diagnosis at some point during our lifetimes. For older people, that diagnosis may be more common than you realize. More than 60% of cancers occur in patients over age 65. For an overview of what a cancer diagnosis means for an older person, take a look at this primer from the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

In some ways, this is a good time to be a cancer patient, given new therapeutic options and trends. One particularly promising approach harnesses your own immune system to combat cancer cells- a process known as cancer immunotherapy. For older patients, however, it’s not clear whether this is a viable option. Most clinical trials for this new therapy have not enrolled the number of older patients needed to determine whether immunotherapy will work in seniors. And older patients typically have less effective immune systems, another potential problem for the effectiveness of immunotherapy. A recent article in STAT outlined the many questions that need to be addressed before we can truly understand whether older patients will reap the potential benefits of this promising new approach to cancer care. For a further understanding of this challenge, Click Here. And for additional evidence of this concern, read about a new Australian study of cancer immunotherapy and seniors Here.