Prostate Cancer Tests Improving With New Technology

Further Tests For Prostate Cancer

If results of the PSA test or the DRE are abnormal, a urologist will likely recommend a biopsy, where small samples of tissue are removed from the prostate and examined.

If cancer is diagnosed, other tests may be used to check the progression of the cancer, including:

• magnetic resonance imaging scan of the prostate – often done before a biopsy
• bone scan – to check whether or not cancer cells have spread to the bones
• computed tomography scan – a specialised x-ray
• pelvic lymph node dissection – a nearby lymph node is removed and examined to check whether or not cancer cells have entered the lymphatic system .

Medical History And Physical Exam

If your doctor suspects you might have prostate cancer, he or she will ask you about any symptoms you are having, such as any urinary or sexual problems, and how long you have had them. You might also be asked about possible risk factors, including your family history.

Your doctor will also examine you. This might include a digital rectal exam , during which the doctor inserts a gloved, lubricated finger into your rectum to feel for any bumps or hard areas on the prostate that might be cancer. If you do have cancer, the DRE can sometimes help tell if its only on one side of the prostate, if its on both sides, or if its likely to have spread beyond the prostate to nearby tissues. Your doctor may also examine other areas of your body.

After the exam, your doctor might then order some tests.

What You Need To Know

• A new imaging technology called mpMRI has helped improve prostate cancer diagnosis and reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies men experience. However, the technology is expensive and not all men are suitable for it.
• Multiparametric ultrasound may be an alternative imaging technique to diagnose prostate cancer that is cheaper and suitable for more men than mpMRI.
• Professor Ahmed is running a clinical trial to compare multiparametric ultrasound against existing diagnostic techniques, to see if it could be used widely in the clinic.

If our project is successful, multi-parametric ultrasound could offer an accurate diagnostic test for prostate cancer at less cost to the NHS than other tests like mpMRI. Professor Hash Ahmed, Chief Investigator of CADMUS

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Researchers At The University Of East Anglia Have Discovered That A Prostate Cancer Urine Test Could Improve The Identification Of Men At Immediate Risk Of Aggressive Cancer Offering Improved Treatment Methods

The new study reveals how urine biomarkers can show the amount of significant cancer in a prostate, providing a more specific prognosis of which men need treatment.

Previously, the teams Prostate Urine Risk test could identify men with high and low-risk cancers. However, with some adaptations, it can now help men with intermediate-risk disease. This test helps patients who had treatment options that were less clear.

As the most common cancer for men in the UK, prostate cancer develops gradually, and most cases usually dont require treatment in a mans lifetime. This test makes the prediction of which tumours and serious cases will progress to a more aggressive form of cancer, making it easier for men to decide on treatment.

The most commonly used tests for prostate cancer include blood tests, a physical examination known as a digital rectal examination , an MRI scan and an invasive biopsy.

Fda Approves New Imaging Tool To Find Advanced Prostate Cancer Drugmaker Says

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new imaging agent to detect prostate cancer after it has spread to other parts of the body, the company that makes the agent said Thursday.

Experts say the tracer, made by medical imaging company Lantheus, will give doctors an important visual aid to guide them to metastatic prostate cancer cells that, before now, were difficult to spot.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men in the United States, after lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. More than 34,000 men die of the disease every year.

When prostate cancer spreads, it often goes into the bones, said Dr. Michael Morris, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. That makes it difficult to detect using traditional imaging techniques.

“It’s really hard to take pictures of what’s going on inside of bone,” Morris said, adding that traditional scans tend to find problems in the tissue surrounding bones, after damage has already been done.

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Biopsy During Surgery To Treat Prostate Cancer

If there is more than a very small chance that the cancer might have spread , the surgeon may remove lymph nodes in the pelvis during the same operation as the removal of the prostate, which is known as a radical prostatectomy .

The lymph nodes and the prostate are then sent to the lab to be looked at. The lab results are usually available several days after surgery.

New Urine Test For Prostate Cancer Available Unlike Psa Test Is Ultra

September 25, 2013 A new urine test for prostate cancer that measures minute fragments of RNA is now commercially available to men nationwide through the University of Michigan MLabs. The new testMi-Prostate Score improves the utility of the PSA blood test, increases physicians ability to pick out high-risk prostate tumors from low-risk tumors in patients, and may help tens of thousands of men avoid unnecessary biopsies.

The MiPS test incorporates blood PSA levels and two molecular RNA markers specific for prostate cancer in one final score that provides men and their doctors with a personalized prostate-cancer risk assessment.

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New Blood Test Improves Prostate Cancer Screening

Date:

Karolinska Institutet

Summary:

Researchers recently reported that magnetic resonance imaging could reduce overdiagnoses and thereby improve prostate cancer screening. Now, the same research group shows that the addition of a novel blood test, the Stockholm3 test, can reduce the number of MRIs performed by a third while further preventing the detection of minor, low-risk tumors.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden recently reported that magnetic resonance imaging could reduce overdiagnoses and thereby improve prostate cancer screening. Now, the same research group has published a study in The Lancet Oncology, which shows that the addition of a novel blood test, the Stockholm3 test, can reduce the number of MRIs performed by a third while further preventing the detection of minor, low-risk tumours.

“Overall, our studies show that we have identified the tools needed to be able to carry out effective and safe screening for prostate cancer. After many years of debate and research, it feels fantastic to be able to present knowledge that can improve healthcare for men,” says Tobias Nordström, associate professor of urology at the Department of Clinical Sciences, Danderyd Hospital at Karolinska Institutet, who is responsible for the STHLM3MRI study.

Henrik Grönberg, Martin Eklund and Tobias Nordström are partners of the company A3P Biomedical AB, which holds the development rights of the Stockholm3 test.

Story Source:

What Is A Nanomedicine

Nanomedicine is a medical application of nanotechnology. Nanomedicine covers a wide spectrum of applications from nanomaterials and biological devices to nanoelectronic biosensors and even future applications such as biological machines that could use molecular nanotechnology .

Various groups around the world have reported that gold nanoparticles, or other high atomic number elements, hold the potential to sensitise tumour cells to radiation treatment, but one key challenge has been delivering these particles in sufficient levels to the right regions within the tumour cells. Combining the gold particles with RALA increases the efficiency of nanoparticle uptake, while also enabling the gold particles to be delivered to regions within the cells that are more sensitive to the effects of radiation damage.

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Current Guidelines In Early Detection

The American Urologic Association , European Association of Urology , and National Comprehensive Cancer Network have modified their guidelines to reflect the limitations of PSA screening and provide a rational basis of screening that minimizes overdiagnosis., The AUA, EAU and NCCN recommend shared decision-making, counselling men on potential risks and benefits of PSA screening. All three organizations recommend screening only men in the 4575 year age group the AUA and EAU also limit screening to men with life expectancy > 1015 years. Screening intervals of two or more years are also suggested as a way to decrease the risks of overdiagnosis. The EAU provides risk stratification and interval adjustment based on PSA levels, while the AUA does not provide any specific criteria on who may be offered an extended screening interval. Neither organization recommends PSA testing in men younger than 40 years of age. However, the EAU does imply that a baseline PSA at age 40 can be used to risk stratify those who should begin earlier routine screening .,

New Prostate Cancer Urine Test Shows How Aggressive Disease Is

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Prostate Cancer Tests Improving With New Technology

When 54-year-old Jeff Rolf went in for his annual physical three years ago, he did not expect to come away with news of an abnormal PSA level and, eventually, a prostate cancer diagnosis.

But the level of prostate-specific antigen in Rolf’s blood had slowly increased between 2000, the year he first took the PSA test, and 2008. Doctorsbecame concerned not because the level was particularly high, but because it trended upward through the years.

Rolf chose to have a biopsy, which was positive for cancer. The Brecksville, Ohio, resident, a vice president of marketing at a major aerospace engineering firm, had a radical prostatectomy in 2009, and underwent radiation therapy in 2010.

“If there’s a poison in your body, its a human reaction to say, ‘Get it out of me,'” Rolf told MyHealthNewsDaily.

Life-saving decisionsDoctors say the PSA test is the best thing out there for prostate cancerscreening, but it’s infamous for its lack of specificity. Many times, an elevated PSA level could be due to an enlarged prostate, inflammation or infection rather than cancer, said Dr. John Wei, a professor of urology at the University of Michigan Health System.

And even if the PSA test indicates a high risk of cancer, it’s unable to differentiate between a slow-growing, nonlethal cancer and that of a clinically significant cancer, Wei said.

“When you multiply that for a million biopsies each year, that’s a lot of men,” Wei told MyHealthNewsDaily.

Improving Upon The Psa Test

The limited reliability of the PSA test, and its lack of specificity for prostate cancer, has led to sharp disagreement over the use of the PSA test as a routine health screening measure for men of a certain age. What everyone does agree upon is the need for better markers of prostate cancer. To date there are no perfect biomarkers that identify only high-risk prostate cancer. But each year progress is made toward such a goal. Today, the University of Michigans Department of Pathology MLabs will begin offering the MiPS urine test that is ultra specific for prostate cancer. The MiPS test scans urine samples for two molecular markers that are distinct to prostate cancer. One marker is a snippet of RNA made from a gene that is overactive in 95 percent of all prostate cancers. The second marker is RNA that is made only when two genes abnormally fuse. The presence of this fusion RNA in a mans urine is ultra specific for prostate cancer.

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Genetic Testing For Some Men With Prostate Cancer

Some doctors now recommend that some men with prostate cancer be tested to look for certain inherited gene changes. This includes men in whom a family cancer syndrome is suspected, as well as men with prostate cancer that has certain high-risk features or that has spread to other parts of the body. Talk to your doctor about the possible pros, cons, and limitations of such testing.

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The scan isn’t meant to replace PSA testing, a common prostate cancer screening tool. PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen, a protein found in the blood. Instead, it’s meant for men who have already been diagnosed with the disease.

The scan would be most useful for prostate cancer patients who have rising PSA levels after they have undergone treatment, including surgery and radiation, said Dr. Xiao Wei, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. A rising PSA level would indicate that the cancer has spread elsewhere in the body.

While Wei and other prostate cancer experts agreed that the imaging would give them more information about metastatic cancer, it remains unclear what they should do with the information.

“The huge looming question is, does it actually impact what we do for the patient? Will that help us improve outcomes?” said Dr. Justin Gregg, an assistant professor of urology and health disparities research at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Prostate cancer treatment is often personalized, depending on a man’s age, any other risk factors he might have or how aggressive the cells look under a microscope. Treatment, which can include radiation and removal of the prostate, can have significant side effects, including impotence and incontinence.

And not all metastatic prostate cancers will threaten a man’s life.

The new imaging is unable to determine which kinds of prostate cancer cells are likely to be more dangerous, Raghavan said.

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Iset Test Results Show Substantial Improvement In Early Detection Of Prostate Cancer By Identifying Psa

PARIS, Oct. 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Rarecells, Inc. , a leading Liquid Biopsy company, is pleased to announce that National Institute of Integrative Medicines researchers obtained striking results in a group of Australian men using the ISET® test for early prostate cancer diagnosis through the detection of Prostate-Specific Antigen positive Circulating Tumor Cells .

The peer-reviewed article published in the journal Frontiers in Oncology , shows that the prostate cancer test based on CTC harvested with the ISET® technology and identified by the Immuno-Cytochemistry PSA marker has an estimated positive-predictive-value of 99% and negative-predictive-value of 97%, providing a more reliable screening test for prostate cancer than the standard PSA blood test .

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in men worldwide. Due to the limited sensitivity and specificity of the standard PSA test, a relevant proportion, close to 75%, of unnecessary prostate biopsies are performed every year, generating avoidable costs and suffering.

This new non-invasive test based on ISET® technology allows for early detection of prostate cancer more accurately than the standard PSA test. Improving the accuracy of tests for early cancer detection may reduce the burden of unnecessary biopsies, said NIIM Director of Research, and Chief Investigator Associate Professor Karin Ried.

About RARECELLS

Focusing On Mens Mental Health

Having prostate cancer and undergoing treatment historically has been associated with negative side effects men might be hesitant to discuss, including:

• Urinary incontinence

Because better screening technology helps us detect cancer sooner, patients are living longerand our modern treatment options support both longevity and quality of life.

At MedStar Health, we look at the whole picture to determine the most effective treatment options that give patients the best chance to maintain or regain their sense of well-being. Our multidisciplinary team includes not only cancer experts and surgeons but also licensed therapists to help manage mental health symptoms. We make every effort to provide a safe, honest environment where patients feel comfortable discussing their concerns.

Quality of life will be a leading area of focus in our fall 2021 study with our research partner, Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, in collaboration with Hackensack Medical Center in New Jersey. The study will research treatment options that lessen the long-term effects of prostate cancer, as well as bladder and kidney cancer, to help patients live longer, healthier lives.

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Imaging Tests For Prostate Cancer

Imaging tests use x-rays, magnetic fields, sound waves, or radioactive substances to create pictures of the inside of your body. One or more imaging tests might be used:

• To look for cancer in the prostate
• To help the doctor see the prostate during certain procedures
• To look for spread of prostate cancer to other parts of the body

Which tests you might need will depend on the situation. For example, a prostate biopsy is typically done with transrectal ultrasound and/or MRI to help guide the biopsy. If you are found to have prostate cancer, you might need imaging tests of other parts of your body to look for possible cancer spread.

The imaging tests used most often to look for prostate cancer spread include:

Use Of Adjuvant Risk Stratification Tests

The NCCN guidelines were among the first to incorporate adjuvant testing into their screening recommendations. Men with persistently elevated PSA are recommended to undergo adjuvant testing: blood tests such as percent free PSA, the 4K score , and prostate health index , or urine tests such as prostate cancer antigen-3 and Select MDx . These adjuvant tests are designed to help reduce overdiagnosis by avoiding potentially unnecessary biopsies. As an example, using a PHI score of 24 as a cutoff for biopsy would avoid 36% of biopsies with no cancer and 24% of biopsies with indolent cancer this strategy would miss only 4% of clinically significant PCa. The 4K score uses a panel of four prostate specific kallikrein proteins related to PSA to improve the accuracy of diagnosis. As an example, using the 4K score with a cutoff of 6% risk of high grade PCa among participants in the PLCO trial would have eliminated unnecessary biopsies in 42% of men, while detecting 88% of high grade cancers. While PHI and 4K score are blood tests, urine based diagnostics are also available to help improve PCa diagnostic accuracy. One such example is the Select MDx test, which measures the mRNA levels of HoxC6 and DLX1 in the urine and incorporates traditional clinical variables into a predictive model. In a testing and validation cohort study, Van Neste et al. determined that the Select MDx test could avoid 30% of negative biopsies while only missing 2% of aggressive cancers.

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