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Because of his age, the aggressive brain tumour that has befallen Edward Kennedy will give the U.S. senator at most three years to live, but likely much less, medical experts say.

Mr. Kennedy, 76, was diagnosed with a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, at the top of the brain, after a biopsy, according to a hospital statement yesterday. He has been undergoing tests at a Boston area hospital since suffering a seizure on Saturday.

Although his physicians would not specify which kind of glioma Mr. Kennedy is suffering from, glioblastoma multiforme is the most common and malignant of what are known as primary brain tumours, according to James Perry, head of neurology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

(Special tests on the tissue sample taken from Mr. Kennedy will need to be conducted before physicians are able to determine for certain which type of glioma he has.)

Glioma describes a family of brain tumours that include benign ones. About 40 per cent of brain tumours are gliomas.

Glioblastoma multiforme spreads cancerous cells quickly to other parts of the brain, and for this reason, is very difficult to treat, Dr. Perry said. Symptoms often begin abruptly, seizures are relatively common and the tumours are often very resistant to treatment.

"It's unfortunately one of the worst-prognosis tumours," Dr. Perry said. "By far, the most significant determinant of survival is someone's age. So at 76, most patients will not do very well with this type of tumour. ... If he does have a glioblastoma, [he has] an average of six to 12 months."

Statistics from doctors in the United States yesterday said malignant glioma kills half of its patients within a year, while others rarely survive more than three years.

Treatments can vary, but typically, neurosurgeons first attempt to remove as much of the tumour as possible. They then proceed to attack it with a course of radiation and chemotherapy, which, in the best of cases, can triple the length of a patient's survival, Dr. Perry said.

Another possible treatment for Mr. Kennedy, should he have glioblastoma multiforme, could be a vaccine that has shown promising results in clinical trials in the United States. Winnipeg native John Sampson, a neurosurgeon at Duke University in North Carolina, has helped some patients survive for three to six years after being diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme.

Contacted yesterday, Dr. Sampson said he is "not speaking to the media about this at this time," although there were reports yesterday that Mr. Kennedy could become a participant in this clinical trial.

Earlier this month, Dr. Sampson told CTV News that his vaccine works by ensuring that after the tumour is removed, the cancer doesn't come back. The vaccine consists of small, "harmless" bits of the tumour that essentially train the immune system to target the cancer cells elsewhere in the body, he said at the time.

About 50 patients have received the vaccine so far, and Canadian trials of the vaccine are set to begin this fall, Dr. Perry confirmed.