US Senator Edward Kennedy has a malignant brain tumour, his doctors said today.
Mr Kennedy (76) has a glioma and will require chemotherapy and radiation therapy, neurologist Dr. Lee Schwamm of Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Larry Ronan, a primary physician there, said in a statement.
The Massachusetts Democrat has been in the hospital since he had a seizure on Saturday.
First elected in 1962, Edward Kennedy is the second-longest serving member in the current US Senate, and has served longer than all but two other senators in American history.
He is the brother of President John Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and of Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his presidential bid. Both brothers also served in the U.S. Senate.
Edward Kennedy's one try for the White House ended in failure in 1980, when he took on a sitting president of his own party, Jimmy Carter. His presidential ambitions were haunted by an accident at the Massachusetts island of Chappaquiddick in 1969, when his car plunged off a bridge and a young woman riding with him, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
Known as "Teddy," he is a liberal icon, but also is known as a consummate dealmaker, able to reach across party lines to get things done. He is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and serves on the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees.
Kennedy became involved in the 2008 presidential race by endorsing Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. Many political obervers have seen this as a passing of the torch from the old Democratic past to the future generation.