New prostate check to spot cancers current tests miss
- Called Stockholm3, test involves a single blood test that looks for five proteins
A new test is twice as effective at detecting prostate cancer as the existing blood test that checks for the disease, according to a new study.
Called Stockholm3, it involves a single blood test that looks for five proteins released from the prostate if there is cancer, including kallikrein 2, and two different measures of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The test also looks at genetic markers.
The current blood test used to detect prostate cancer looks for PSA only. Levels can increase if cancer is present, but not all cancers actually raise PSA levels. Moreover, levels of PSA can rise for other reasons, such as an infection and advancing age — which means the PSA blood test can wrongly reassure someone cancer is not present, and can lead to unnecessary scans and biopsies when levels are raised for reasons other than cancer.
As the new test also identifies other proteins and genetic markers, it’s thought that this increases the accuracy.
The results of the blood test are then combined with personal data, including the person’s age and family history, and also genetic markers: these are used to produce a score representing the risk of having prostate cancer that requires treatment.
A new test is twice as effective at detecting prostate cancer as the existing blood test that checks for the disease, according to a new study (File image)
A score of at least 11 per cent is an indicator of increased prostate cancer risk, and the patient would be referred for an MRI scan, which may then lead to a biopsy.
Compared with the PSA test, Stockholm3 halves the number of unnecessary biopsies, according to new research presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Milan in March.
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The prostate is a small walnut-sized gland, located between the penis and the bladder: its role is to produce a fluid that mixes with sperm to produce semen. There are more than 50,000 new cases of prostate cancer each year in the UK and around 12,000 deaths.
The risk of prostate cancer increases with age, with most cases diagnosed after 50, but ethnicity and family history can play a part.
Results from a four-year study in Stockholm, Sweden, involving more than 5,000 men, showed that the new test also led to a 28 per cent reduction in the cancers detected too late for treatment compared to centres using only the PSA test.
Previous research showed that twice as many cancers that require treatment are found with the new test compared with a PSA test, reported the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health in 2020.
So far the new test, costing around £395, is only available at a handful of private clinics.
Professor Raj Persad, a consultant urologist at the private Bristol Urology Associates clinic, said: ‘This test may save anxiety, stress and expense for patients in avoiding MRI and biopsy where it is not needed, and it also unearths cases which hitherto may have been missed at an early stage of cancer development.
‘It is just being introduced to the UK, and will need careful evaluation before establishing its place in NHS clinical practice.’
Men with the highest triglyceride levels were 4.57 times more likely to develop prostate cancer than those with the lowest (File image)
Having high levels of a type of fat called triglycerides in the blood can lead to a near five-fold increase in the risk of aggressive prostate cancer, according to a recent study in the journal Frontiers in Oncology.
Mainly found in meat, butter and cooking oils, triglycerides are stored in fat cells and released when needed for energy. Scientists studied health records of more than 1,700 men who had a biopsy, 720 of whom went on to be diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Men with the highest triglyceride levels were 4.57 times more likely to develop the disease than those with the lowest, according to researchers at the University of Ulsan in South Korea.
One theory is that the fat may increase inflammation, which has been implicated in the development of cancer.
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