Beyond Prostate Specific Antigen: New Prostate Cancer Screening Options

Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is one of the best-known biomarkers for screening, diagnosis and follow-up of patients for prostate cancer. Owing to several inherent limitations with PSA, various newer blood and urinary based biomarkers have been evaluated in pursuit of better detection and risk stratification of prostate cancer cases. A combination of these different markers, in adjunct with clinical risk factors, and recent advances in imaging promises to offer better diagnostic performance with clearer risk stratification guiding therapeutics. We carried out an extensive literature search for the different biomarkers available for screening and diagnosis of prostate cancer, compared their performance with serum PSA to allow clinicians to draw meaningful conclusions to offer their patients a more personalized medical care.

Automated summary

PSA is a well-known biomarker used for screening, diagnosis, and follow-up of prostate cancer patients. Due to its limitations, newer blood and urinary biomarkers have been evaluated to improve detection and risk stratification. A combination of these markers, clinical risk factors, and advances in imaging offer the potential for better diagnostic performance and clearer risk stratification to guide therapeutics.