More Accurate Test for Prostate Cancer

Health Wellness

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Some cancers are gender specific. Women face ovarian, cervical and uterine cancer and men don’t. Most people fail to realize that breast cancer affects men as well as women, only it’s not as common among men. The American Cancer Society predicts that in 2018, about 2,550 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in men, compared to about 266,120 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in women.

For men, they alone have to deal with testicular, penile and prostate cancer with the most common and deadliest being prostate cancer. The American Cancer Society predicts there will be about 164,690 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed this year. They also estimate that prostate cancer will claim the lives of about 29,430 men just this year.

According to the American Cancer Society:

“About 1 man in 9 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime.”

“Prostate cancer develops mainly in older men and in African-American men. About 6 cases in 10 are diagnosed in men aged 65 or older, and it is rare before age 40. The average age at the time of diagnosis is about 66.”

“Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind lung cancer. About 1 man in 41 will die of prostate cancer.”

“Prostate cancer can be a serious disease, but most men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not die from it. In fact, more than 2.9 million men in the United States who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point are still alive today.”

There are two standard methods used to diagnose prostate cancer.

  1. Digital Rectal Exam (DRE) – where a doctor inserts a gloved and lubricated finger into the rectum and feels for the prostate gland and any enlargement or abnormalities. For many years, this was the standard method used.
  2. Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) – is a blood test that specifically looks for specific antigens produced by the prostate gland and cancer cells. A normal PSA level is around 4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). the higher the PSA number, the greater chance of developing or having prostate cancer. However, about 15% of men with PSA levels below 4 may still have prostate cancer, indicating the problem with the common blood test. PSA tests can lead to false positives as well as false negatives. A false positive PSA usually results in undergoing a biopsy. It should be noted that PSA does NOT actually detect cancer, just the levels of the antigen produced by the gland.

Researchers have developed a new test, called IsoPSA. The new test is far more accurate, as described by lead researcher Eric Klein, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic:

“What we can say with confidence now is that the IsoPSA is more accurate than PSA and is substantially more accurate in detecting the presence of high-grade cancer and, if widely adopted and used in the right way, could reduce the number of men who undergo biopsy unnecessarily by almost 50 percent.”

The new IsoPSA can also distinguish between low-grade and high-grade prostate cancer. When combined with an MRI guided biopsy, they have found an 86% accuracy rate in predicting high-grade prostate cancer.

For men who have a family history of prostate cancer and have had normal PSA readings or false positives, they may want to inquire about having the IsoPSA test, which hopefully will become standard in the very near future.

Prostate Cancer

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