Utility of Free/Total Prostate Specific Antigen (f/t PSA) Ratio in Diagnosis of Prostate Carcinoma

• Main Authors: V. Thakur, P. P. Singh, M. Talwar, U. Mukherjee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2004-01-01
• Series: Disease Markers
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2004/913870

The discovery that PSA exists in serum in both free and complexed forms led to development of immunoassays specific for different PSA forms. This helped in measuring free PSA in the presence of PSA-ACT (PSA-α antichymotrypsin), hence it was possible to calculate the percent free PSA or free to total PSA ratio, measurement of which was helpful in reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies significantly, while maintaining a high clinical sensitivity for detection of cancer. The study was performed on 103 consecutive male patients (mean age 68 ± 10.8 years SD) comprising of 90 patients with benign disease (87%) and 13 prostate carcinoma patients (13%), who had histologically proven prostate cancer. Patients with total PSA between 2–25 ng/ml were included in the study. 30 normal healthy males with age 58 ± 10 years, served as control. Serum total PSA and free PSA were analyzed using streptavidin biotin EIA method (M/s Roche Diagnostics, Germany). The mean total PSA in normal healthy control subjects was 1.86 ± 1.07 ng/ml. It was increased significantly in diseased condition. Its mean concentration in carcinoma patients was 12.6 ± 5.3 ng/ml and in benign patients it was 6.3 ± 4.6 ng/ml. The free to total PSA ratio in all the three groups was significantly different (p Combination of this ratio cutoff with other parameters like serum total PSA, DRE and TRUS helped in increasing the sensitivity of the test and this also helped in reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies. In 103 men who were biopsied, 13 (12.6%) prostatic carcinoma were identified. Among these 13 cancer patients, 9 patients had abnormal findings in DRE.7 individuals out of these 9, also had free to total PSA ratio lower than 0.16 and would have been biopsied and diagnosed anyway. If we use only f/t PSA ratio less than 0.16, to decide whom to biopsy, we would have biopsied and diagnosed 11/13 cases i.e. sensitivity of 85% but If we decide to biopsy those patients who had abnormal DRE and those who had low f/t PSA ratio, we could identify 13/13 carcinoma i.e. 100% sensitivity.