New prostate cancer test Blood protein check more exact than PSA
New prostate cancer test Blood protein check more exact than PSA
A new prostate cancer test that relies on measuring levels of a blood protein found cancer 94 percent of the time, a significant improvement over the current PSA test, according to a study released Wednesday.
Each year, about 1.6 million men undergo biopsies because they test positive on a PSA test -- but only about 230,000 of them have cancer.
The new test for the blood protein, EPCA-2, not only detects prostate cancer, but also can determine if it has spread to other parts of the body, according to the study published in the journal Urology.
"It could allow us to help patients decide if they need a biopsy or if it's tame or has the ability to invade outside the prostate," said Robert Getzenberg, director of research at James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of the study.
The test must undergo large-scale clinical trials and review by the Food and Drug Administration, but it could be available early next year, said Getzenberg, who is a consultant to Onconome Inc., a Seattle biomedical company that is developing the test.
Each year, about 230,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed and about 27,000 men die, according to the American Cancer Society.
Digital rectal examination and the test for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), which was approved in 1994, have been the primary methods of detecting the cancer. But questions about the accuracy of the PSA test have been building over the years; it has a high level of false positives and misses about 15 percent of prostate cancers.
Many false-positive results require that patients undergo a biopsy, a surgical procedure in which prostate samples are taken for analysis. Another problem is the PSA test does not distinguish between the cancer's aggressive form, which is frequently fatal, and a slow-growing form that patients safely can live with. "The PSA is a flawed marker. Everybody agrees with that," says Dr. Laurence Klotz, chief of urology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.
In hunting down a new marker, Getzenberg said his team found that EPCA-2 was structurally different in cancerous and normal prostate cells. The researchers measured the EPCA-2 levels in the blood of 385 men who were known to have cancer or were free of it. Men who had an elevated EPCA-2 test had cancer 94 percent of the time, compared with about 19 percent of men with an elevated PSA result, reported in previous studies.
The test falsely sounded an alarm 3 percent of the time, according to the report. The EPCA-2 test missed about 6 percent of existing cancers, but the PSA test misses about 15 percent of existing cancers, according to previous studies.
Via Google News
A new prostate cancer test that relies on measuring levels of a blood protein found cancer 94 percent of the time, a significant improvement over the current PSA test, according to a study released Wednesday.
Each year, about 1.6 million men undergo biopsies because they test positive on a PSA test -- but only about 230,000 of them have cancer.
The new test for the blood protein, EPCA-2, not only detects prostate cancer, but also can determine if it has spread to other parts of the body, according to the study published in the journal Urology.
"It could allow us to help patients decide if they need a biopsy or if it's tame or has the ability to invade outside the prostate," said Robert Getzenberg, director of research at James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of the study.
The test must undergo large-scale clinical trials and review by the Food and Drug Administration, but it could be available early next year, said Getzenberg, who is a consultant to Onconome Inc., a Seattle biomedical company that is developing the test.
Each year, about 230,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed and about 27,000 men die, according to the American Cancer Society.
Digital rectal examination and the test for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), which was approved in 1994, have been the primary methods of detecting the cancer. But questions about the accuracy of the PSA test have been building over the years; it has a high level of false positives and misses about 15 percent of prostate cancers.
Many false-positive results require that patients undergo a biopsy, a surgical procedure in which prostate samples are taken for analysis. Another problem is the PSA test does not distinguish between the cancer's aggressive form, which is frequently fatal, and a slow-growing form that patients safely can live with. "The PSA is a flawed marker. Everybody agrees with that," says Dr. Laurence Klotz, chief of urology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.
In hunting down a new marker, Getzenberg said his team found that EPCA-2 was structurally different in cancerous and normal prostate cells. The researchers measured the EPCA-2 levels in the blood of 385 men who were known to have cancer or were free of it. Men who had an elevated EPCA-2 test had cancer 94 percent of the time, compared with about 19 percent of men with an elevated PSA result, reported in previous studies.
The test falsely sounded an alarm 3 percent of the time, according to the report. The EPCA-2 test missed about 6 percent of existing cancers, but the PSA test misses about 15 percent of existing cancers, according to previous studies.
Via Google News
Labels: Cancer
posted by Anand Kumar Reddy at
8:30 PM
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