Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a substantial increase in waiting times for cystoscopies, prompting concerns of delayed diagnoses and substandard surveillance of bladder cancer. Expanding the role of urinary biomarkers in diagnostic and surveillance pathways could be a strategy to address this problem, and several novel biomarkers have shown promise for this purpose.
In medicine and society exist two pandemics. One, COVID-19, has recently emerged and has been widely acknowledged. The other — systemic racism — has been silently deadly for centuries. Now is the time to recognize the impact of this other pandemic and to eradicate it.
Management of rare genitourinary malignancies often depends on individual physicians’ discretion, resulting in non-standardized care. Furthermore, patients experience worse clinical outcomes than patients with common malignancies. Collaborative efforts such as the Global Society of Rare Genitourinary Tumors (GSRGT) are therefore necessary.
Exposure to urology is essential for medical undergraduates to prepare them with the competencies required to manage basic urological conditions and to generate interest in the specialty. However, despite the existence of national curricula, the lack of urological exposure and falling competition ratios indicate a need for an evaluation of urological teaching in medical schools.
Cancer sequencing studies have revealed that urothelial carcinomas harbour recurrent mutations in multiple genes that control epigenetics. A major challenge for basic and clinical researchers is to convert this genetic information into biological and pathological insights, as well as to tailor novel therapeutic modalities for individual patients with bladder cancer.
Plastics have an integral role in our daily lives but at a considerable cost to the environment and, as we are now learning, to human health. Increased plastic exposure has been linked to compromised endocrine function, reproductive health and semen quality and, potentially, urological cancers. However, the long-term consequences of plastic exposure remain to be seen.