Prostate cancer: Improving PSA testing by adjusting for genetic background

摘要

Serum PSA levels vary from man to man and between populations, partly owing to inherited factors, which are thought to account for 40-45% of the variation within the male population. Recently, a number of specific sequence variations—or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)-in the genes that encode the kallikrein family of serine proteases, including human kallikrein-2 (hK2) and PSA (also known as human kallikrein-3 [hK3]), have been shown to affect circulating levels of these biomarkers.1 In a recently published paper, Helfand et al.2 explore the intriguing question of whether correcting PSA levels for a man's background genotype could improve the accuracy of serum PSA screening for prostate cancer.