Cancer News: Chemical Tests Offer Quick Check For Prostate Cancer
LONDON (Reuters) – Instead of using the blood test to determine if a prostate cancer, one day more doctors to diagnose the condition using a new technique that measures a different context, researchers said.
A small study showed that the test in three minutes, a fingerprint or a chemical called citrate, it is clear that prostate cancer develops, David Parker of Durham University in Britain , said in a telephone interview.
“Citrate significant biomarkers for disease, a reliable method for screening and detection of prostate cancer and to monitor people with the disease,” said Parker, who helped develop the test.
“This technology could form the basis of a simple method of screening for prostate cancer, which are in the ambulatory services and hospitals.”
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men in the world, after lung cancer. It kills 254,000 people per year worldwide.
Doctors usually recommend a blood test, prostate specific antigen or PSA test for men over 50 years in the belief that early diagnosis and aggressive treatment of cancer, anything is better than nothing, and to do so.
But much prostate cancer grows slowly and takes years to create. Some studies show that many men live with the side effects of aggressive treatment with surgery and radiotherapy for cancer which can never kill.
In his study, Parker and his colleagues have emphasized the connection citrate – provides energy to cells – in the liquid from the prostate, because the slowdown in the chemical industry obviously, if a person has prostate cancer, said researchers.
The amount of iron citrate is dependent enzymes, which are very sensitive to zinc. For men with advanced prostate cancer, zinc is a depression, which in turn leads to a decrease in citrate.
“This method allows us to analyze what happened in the early stages and treatment of prostate cancer,” Leslie Costello of the University of Maryland, said. “This shows great promise as a clinical tool.”
Researchers, whose results in the newspaper and bio-molecular organic chemistry, said the new tests, only one micro-liter of liquid – a millionth liter – as an example to study. Researchers usually extract liquid from the prostate with a needle.
Although promising, this technique for at least several years away from use in hospitals and clinics because investigators have to do more research, “said Parker.
Among the samples are also more invasive than the conventional PSA test, researchers, whether in the future could be to treat.
