Beyond The Abstract Detection Of Prostate Specific Antigen Coupled To Immunoglobulin M In Prostate Cancer Patients

Main Category: Prostate / Prostate Cancer
Also Included In: Urology / Nephrology;  Men's health;  Clinical Trials / Drug Trials
Article Date: 03 Feb 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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UroToday.com - Xeptagen findings published in the latest issue of Cancer Detection and Prevention may open a new gateway for the management of prostate cancer patients. The study provides the first evidence that circulating prostate specific antigens (PSA) may be detected complexed to IgM at significantly elevated levels in a much higher number of patients with prostate cancer compared to free PSA levels, therefore achieving the needed discrimination between benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostate cancer. Assessment of PSA-IgM levels in the free PSA grey zone (4 ng/mL - 10 ng/mL), where the outcome of biopsies is most equivocal and unpredictable, leads to a clear identification of cancer patients. Due to the limited overlapping of serum levels of PSA-IgM and PSA, the combined use of both biomarkers improves even further the accuracy of prostate cancer detection. The study provides further support of the occurrence of biomarkers-IgM complexes in cancer and strengthens previous studies on liver and colorectal cancer, where assessment of squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCA) (Beneduce et al. Cancer 2005), α-fetoprotein (AFP) (Beneduce et a.l. Int. J. Biol. Markers 2004) and carcinoembryogenic antigen (CEA) (Castaldi et al. Int. J. Biomarkers 2005) complexed to IgM provided much better diagnostic indexes than the determination of the corresponding free biomarkers for cancer detection.

Written by

Luca Beneduce, Ph.D, as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations etc... of their research by referencing the published abstract.

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