Private MD News

Blood test may show severity of prostate growths

Category: Prostate

A new study has found that a simple blood test may be all that's needed to determine which men with potentially non-lethal prostate growths will be better off simply monitoring the condition, and which men will need more aggressive treatment.

The study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, found that the DNA of men with worsening prostates will have an abnormal number of chromosomes, which points to the presence of cancer cells.

Lead researcher, Robert Veltri, told the Johns Hopkins University Gazette that the test would allow doctors to detect cancer at an earlier stage in men with harmful growths, while avoiding treatment for men who don't need it.

“There are no outward signs that these small prostate cancers may be progressing—men clinically feel the same, and physicians are not likely to detect it on conventional imaging scans,” he told the news source. “We believe that close monitoring with the right biomarker tools may help to detect this shift in pathological stage."

More than 28,000 men died from prostate cancer in 2006, according to the most recent available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.