Choice of PSA assay clinically significant

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 31 May 2004 - 5:00 PDT

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Two common screening systems for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) consistently produce different results, say US researchers, who claim their findings can aid the interpretation of test data.

Cross-platform variation in PSA results is a well-known problem that hampers decisions over whether to perform a prostate biopsy. Richard Link and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, compared two popular PSA assays: the Hybritech Access and the Centaur systems.

During a one-week period in September 2000, a total of 2034 patients underwent digital rectal examination and parallel serum PSA screening with both systems.

Writing in the Journal of Urology, Link et al report that median PSA was low with both assays: 0.99 ng/ml with the Centaur and 1.09 ng/ml with the Access system.

However, the Access system consistently produced results that were around 1.23 times higher than those obtained with Centaur (p0.001).

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