The ned of other biomarkers for detecting prostate cancer
January 14th, 2010 Posted in prostate cancer diagnosisProstate-specific antigen (PSA) has been used for prostate cancer detection since 1994. Although PSA is the best cancer biomarker available, it is not perfect. Many urologists claim PSA lacks both the sensitivity and specificity to accurately detect the presence of prostate cancer. None of the PSA thresholds currently in use consistently identify patients with prostate cancer and exclude patients without cancer.
New approaches to improve urologists’ ability to detect prostate cancer and predict the course of the disease are required. Bu consequence, additional methods for detecting prostate cancer have been evaluated. Despite the discovery of many new biomarkers, only a few of them have shown some clinical value. These markers include human kallikrein 2, urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor, prostate-specific membrane antigen, early prostate cancer antigen, PCA3, ?-methylacyl-CoA racemase and glutathione S-transferase ? hypermethylation.