According to a new study, a home saliva test is better to determine the risk of prostate cancer in some men than a standard market test.
The results mean that people with the highest risk of prostate cancer – one of the most common forms of cancer among men – can have a new tracking version with less likely to represent false positive results, which require burdensome consequences.
For a study published in New England Medicine JournalResearchers have collected saliva samples of about 6400 men aged 50 years and 60 years in the UK and used DNA samples to calculate the risk of prostate cancer, which is called a test risk test.
Then they conducted additional exams and a biopsy for men with higher risk tests and diagnosed prostate cancer up to 40% of them.
Among men marked as a high risk using a prostate screening tool, 25% really had cancer – much worse results than with saliva test.
This means that the introduction of a saliva test can “identify men with the risk of aggressive cancer, which need greater testing and the salvation of men who are at least the risk of unnecessary treatment methods,” said Rosalind ELS, one of the authors of the study and a teacher of oncogenetic Research Institute of Cancer (Icr).
Incorrectly positive result of standard tests
A standard tool is a blood test that monitors a protein called a specific prostate antigen (PSA). High PSA levels can be a sign of prostate cancer.
The PSA test is usually used in men with a great risk of cancer development from their age or ethnicity, or from the fact that they have symptoms. Men with a high PSA level are sent to additional tests to confirm if they have cancer.
But the test, as a rule, gives false positives and detects low cancer cancer, which is probably never fatal, which means that many men are subjected to unnecessary examinations, biopsy and treatment, according to ICR.
Researchers say that the saliva test can serve as another tracking tool offered to men, that they risk prostate cancer or symptoms.
Future research will accompany men with high polygenic risk tests to see if they have prostate cancer.
But it may take years until saliva tests become the current practice of logistics and the cost of their integration into the healthcare system, according to Michael INUIE, professors of the population systems and healthcare genomes at Cambridge University, which was not involved in the study.
“For me, the study really makes me begin to believe that these investments are worth it,” he said.