New hope in disease fight

Urine test accurate for prostate cancer

A REVOLUTIONARY urine test has been developed that can accurately predict which men do and don’t need risky prostate cancer surgery.

Two in three men diagnosed with low risk prostate cancer currently choose not to have surgery and instead monitor the disease.

But experts hope to lift that level to 90 per cent, through the new urine test, which is still in development and not yet available in Australia.

Ultimately, the urine test could replace the sometimes unreliable PSA blood test currently used to identify men at risk of prostate cancer.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital have developed the experimental new test called ‘PUR’ (Prostate Urine Risk) with funding from the Movember Foundation.

The researchers said if this test was to be used in the clinic, large numbers of men undertaking active monitoring of their disease could avoid an unnecessary initial biopsy and the repeated, invasive followup testing.

This is because the test can identify men who are up to eight times less likely to need treatment within five years of diagnosis.

Dr Jeremy Clark from Norwich Medical School said the urine test could be used to not only diagnose prostate cancer without the need for an invasive needle biopsy but identify a patient’s level of risk.

“This means that we could predict whether or not prostate cancer patients already on active surveillance would require treatment,” he said.

“The really exciting thing is that the test predicted disease progression up to five years before it was detected by standard clinical methods,” he said.

Global director of biomedical research programs at the Movember Foundation Dr Mark Buzza said “the PUR test has enormous potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer”.

President of the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand ( USANZ) Dr Peter Heathcote said too many men with low risk disease are still undergoing costly surgery they may not need.

The surgery or radiotherapy can have life-changing side effects including incontinence, infection, impotence.

“The test predicted disease progression”

DR JEREMY CLARK