Urine analysis for prostate cancer prognosis

Michigan, February 12: In a remarkable medical breakthrough, researchers at the University of Michigan claim to have discovered a simple urine analysis scheme that can help gauge whether a man has aggressive or placid version of prostate cancerdefinedefine.

Metabolomics, a study looking at metabolites - the chemicals produced during metabolism - revealed that levels of sarcosine, a derivative of the amino acid glycine passed out in urine, are substantially higher in patients with aggressive tumors, opposed to those that grow slowly.

Making matters worse, benign tumors when exposed to sarcosine turned dramatically aggressive. However, blocking sarcosine production in aggressive tumors rendered them tamed and less invasive.

For supportive evidence, researchers analyzed 1,126 metabolites collected from 262 tissue, blood and urine samples. The participants’ severity of the disease varied from early, advanced to metastatic (tumors that have already spread) prostate cancerdefinedefine.

Upon comprehending the samples, researchers identified 10 metabolites that were closely associated with the progression of prostate cancer – one of which, sarcosine, was the most indicative of advanced prostate cancer.

While, 79 percent of the men with metastatic cancer and 42 percent in early stage of the disease reportedly had elevated levels of sarcosine, no trace of sarcosine was found in samples from men who did not have prostate cancer, the researchers noted.

"We have tantalizing evidence that this sarcosine pathway may be involved in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer" study’s lead researcher Arul M. Chinnaiyan, professor of pathology and urology at University of Michigan, asserted.

The findings, if validated in larger clinical trials, would lead to the development of new therapies. It would thus come across as a cheap, non-invasive way that would either completely replace or complement the currently used prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test.

"One big clinical issue in prostate cancer is trying to distinguish aggressive prostate cancer from the indolent version of the disease", Chinnaiyan said. "What we doctors end up doing is over-treating patients because we can't distinguish aggressive from indolent disease", he admitted.

Prostate cancer, the cancer of the prostate gland in the male reproductive system, is the most common form of cancer afflicting American men. Affecting 80 percent of men over the age of 80, an estimated 186,320 cases were diagnosed last year with about 28,000 deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.

The findings feature in the Feb. 12 issue of Nature.