But now a scientist at the Children's Hospital of Boston says that an easier to administer urine test may actually produce more accurate results. In his study, which appeared in the January edition of the journal Prostate, the doctor says nearly half of the people whose cancer was detected in his urine test would have probably had negative blood tests for the disease.
Men middle-aged and older routinely get blood tests for prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, to screen for prostate cancer.
However, PSA testing has shortcomings: many men with elevated PSAs don't have clinically significant prostate cancer and may undergo unnecessary treatments, which can cause infertility, incontinence, and impotence.
A preliminary study from Children's Hospital Boston, led by Dr. Bruce Zetter, shows that a simple urine test may improve upon PSA screening.
Zetter, a researcher in the Vascular Biology Program at Children's, is interested in the role of cell motility -- cells' ability to move and travel -- in helping cancers to metastasize.
In this study, Zetter and colleagues compared thymosin �15 levels in urine samples from 121 men with prostate cancer, 15 men with other genitourinary cancers (kidney or bladder cancer), 81 men with non-malignant prostate disease (such as prostatitis), 73 men with other non-malignant urologic diseases (such as urinary tract infection), and 52 healthy men who served as controls.
Thymosin �15 levels were elevated in men with aggressive or untreated prostate cancer, but normal or near-normal in healthy men and men with other genitourinary diseases.
Men receiving androgen deprivation therapy (an indication they had aggressive prostate cancer) were 12 times more likely than the healthy controls to have elevated thymosin �15.
Another group of markers will soon enter formal clinical trials in adults with prostate, breast, bladder, lung, and colon cancer.
Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults for 136 years.
More than 500 scientists, including eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, nine members of the Institute of Medicine and 10 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community.