The Relationship between Prostate-Specific Antigen and Prostate Cancer Risk: The Prostate Biopsy Collaborative Group

AJ Vickers, AM Cronin, Monique Roobol - Bouts, J Hugosson, JS Jones, MW Kattan, E Klein, F Hamdy, D Neal, J Donovan, DJ Parekh, D Ankerst, G Bartsch, H Klocker, W Horninger, A Benchikh, G Salama, A Villers, SJ Freedland, DM MoreiraFritz Schröder, H Lilja

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

75 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Purpose: The relationship between prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level and prostate cancer risk remains subject to fundamental disagreements. We hypothesized that the risk of prostate cancer on biopsy for a given PSA level is affected by identifiable characteristics of the cohort under study. Experimental Design: We used data from five European and three U. S. cohorts of men undergoing biopsy for prostate cancer; six were population-based studies and two were clinical cohorts. The association between PSA and prostate cancer was calculated separately for each cohort using locally weighted scatterplot smoothing. Results: The final data set included 25,772 biopsies and 8,503 cancers. There were gross disparities between cohorts with respect to both the prostate cancer risk at a given PSA level and the shape of the risk curve. These disparities were associated with identifiable differences between cohorts: for a given PSA level, a greater number of biopsy cores increased the risk of cancer (odds ratio for >6- versus 6-core biopsy, 1.35; 95% confidence interval, 1.18-1.54; P < 0.0005); recent screening led to a smaller increase in risk per unit change in PSA (P = 0.001 for interaction term) and U. S. cohorts had higher risk than the European cohorts (2.14; 95% confidence interval, 1.99-2.30; P < 0.0005). Conclusions: Our results suggest that the relationship between PSA and risk of a positive prostate biopsy varies, both in terms of the probability of prostate cancer at a given PSA value and the shape of the risk curve. This poses challenges to the use of PSA-driven algorithms to determine whether biopsy is indicated. Clin Cancer Res; 16(17); 4374-81. (C) 2010 AACR.
Original languageUndefined/Unknown
Pages (from-to)4374-4381
Number of pages8
JournalClinical Cancer Research
Volume16
Issue number17
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010

Cite this