Medicinski vjesnik, Vol. 41 No. (1-2), 2009.
Review article
Tumor markers for prostate cancer
Ivan Mihaljević
Dunja Mudri
Ljubica Glavaš-Obrovac
Antun Tucak
Abstract
Prostate cancer is the leading malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the majority of countries of the Western Hemisphere. Extremely useful marker for early detection of prostate cancer and in monitoring patients for disease is serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA). The main limitation of serum PSA detection is a low specificity since enhanced PSA serum concentration could be found in patients with benign prostate hyperplasia and prostatitis. In order to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies there is a strong tendency to improve the PSA specificity by introducing various methods of serum PSA determination as well as implementation of other specific human glandular prostate kallikreins measurements in combination with PSA. The introduction of new tumor markers, growth factors and inhibitors of the prostate cancer is the novel approach in the diagnostics of prostate cancer. Until those biomarkers become validated, the majority of them stay unavailable in daily clinical practice. Furthermore, the established PSA is still widely used, with its controversial questions regarding the limits of its reliability.
Keywords
Prostate-specific antigen; Prostatic neoplasms; Tumor markers - biological
Hrčak ID:
191634
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2009.
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