Cancer treatment side effects can make sex more difficult.
Treatment for certain cancers can affect your sexuality, causing a range of signs and symptoms that can make sex with your partner more difficult. But that doesn't mean you can't have a healthy sex life after cancer treatment. Knowing more about your cancer treatment and how it may affect sexual function can help you find a solution that will work for you.
What is gene therapy?
Put simply, gene therapy involves altering the genes inside your cells in order to stop disease. Gene therapy holds promise for treating a wide range of diseases, but the majority of trials under way are being conducted in people with cancer.
Genes are found in the cells that make up your body. They hold your DNA — the code that determines everything about you, such as your eye color and how tall you'll be. Your cells use the DNA from your genes to manufacture proteins that help translate your genetic code and set into action everything that occurs in your body, from making you grow taller to regulating your body systems. Throughout your life, your genes are turning on and off in order to control cell activity.
Cancer can result when something goes wrong with the genes in some cells. Each time a cell divides, it makes a copy of your DNA — usually an exact copy. But sometimes an error occurs. Your body has procedures in place to identify and repair those errors. When errors aren't corrected, cancer can result as the cells become unregulated and grow in an unrestricted manner as a result of their faulty genetic code.
Gene therapy targets the rogue genes by either focusing on what's going wrong in the cancer cells or enhancing the healthy cells of your immune system in a way that makes them attack your cancer.
How would altered genes get into the cancer cells?
This has proved to be the most difficult part of gene therapy. In order to get the altered genes into the cancer cells, researchers are looking for carriers — called vectors — that can insert the gene into the cancer cells without alarming your immune system and without hurting your healthy cells.
Viruses have shown the most potential to carry altered genes to cancer cells. Viruses can be manipulated to find target cells in your body, and viruses have the ability to latch onto these cells. Viruses are also good at planting their genetic material into cells' genes. Finally, viruses can withstand your body's defenses, so they can survive to reach the target cells.
The virus must first be made safe for your body, so it won't make you sick. Researchers remove some of the genes that make a virus cause illness. Then researchers make changes to the virus so that it targets the cancer cells and delivers the treatment.
What are the potential problems with gene therapy?
Gene therapy opens the possibility for unique problems. Concerns include:
- Targeting correct cells and genes. Once gene therapy treatments enter the body, doctors can't be sure that a treatment will find the right cells and place the genetic changes in the right spots. No one knows what would happen if, for instance, the wrong genes were turned on or off. Potentially, this could put you at risk of other cancers.
- Preventing genetic changes from being passed on. Researchers aren't sure if the genetic changes caused by gene therapy could be inadvertently passed on in the DNA parents give to children. It isn't clear what effects this could have.
- Using gene therapy in an ethical manner. The idea of altering genetic code makes many people uneasy. Some fear that the technology could be used unethically to, for example, alter genes within human eggs and sperm to change the eye color of a future child or attempt to enhance intelligence.
As researchers continue studying gene therapy, the potential for this treatment must be weighed against the possible problems.
Last Updated: 06/18/2007
