{"id":14313,"date":"2019-10-02T00:10:56","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T00:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/squad\/?p=14313"},"modified":"2019-10-02T00:10:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T00:10:56","slug":"new-blood-test-may-replace-prostate-biopsies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/prostate\/new-blood-test-may-replace-prostate-biopsies\/","title":{"rendered":"New Blood Test May Replace Prostate Biopsies"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if you could avoid a prostate biopsy and significantly improve the accuracy of a cancer diagnosis with a simple blood test?<\/span><\/p>\n

That idea may be closer than you think!<\/span><\/p>\n

Diagnosing prostate cancer<\/h3>\n

A new study published in the <\/span>Journal of Urology<\/span><\/i> has found that combining prostate specific antigen (PSA) results with this new blood test that looks for circulating tumor cells may be more than 90% accurate in diagnosing aggressive prostate cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

This combination approach is more accurate than any existing biomarkers for prostate cancer and, once approved, may be available to doctors in 3 to 5 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTesting for circulating tumor cells is efficient, noninvasive, and potentially accurate,\u201d says Yong-Jie Lu, a professor of molecular oncology at the Barts Cancer Institute of Queen Mary University of London, \u201cand we\u2019ve now demonstrated its potential to improve the current standard of care.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem with current tests<\/h3>\n

Although raised PSA levels can be a sign that prostate cancer is present, there are other conditions that can also raise PSA levels, including inflammation or noncancerous enlargement of the prostate. That\u2019s why a biopsy is performed; to confirm the presence of cancer via a tissue analysis. But there are some concerns:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Biopsies are uncomfortable.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Biopsies run the risk of infection and bleeding.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Most men with raised PSA levels who get a biopsy don\u2019t actually have cancer.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Even if the biopsy DOES reveal cancer, most of the time the tumor isn\u2019t aggressive and won\u2019t be fatal if left untreated anyway.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Prostate cancer in the United States<\/h3>\n

    According to the American Cancer Society, roughly 1 in 9 men will develop prostate cancer. But while over 174,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2019, only an estimated 31,620 will die from it. That may sound like a lot, but consider that more than 3.2 million men in the United States are currently living with a prostate cancer diagnosis.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What if you could avoid a prostate biopsy and significantly improve the accuracy of a cancer diagnosis with a simple blood test? That idea may be closer than you think! Diagnosing prostate cancer A new study published in the Journal of Urology has found that combining prostate specific antigen (PSA) results with this new blood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[697],"tags":[765],"class_list":["post-14313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prostate","tag-prostate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}