Prostate-specific antigen half-life and pretreatment prostate-specific antigen: crucial predictors for prostate-specific antigen trend in delayed-combined androgen blockade therapy
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 15, 2026
A Bioluminescent and Fluorescent Orthotopic Syngeneic Murine Model of Androgen-dependent and Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer
Published on: March 6, 2018
Norihito Soga1, Takehisa Onishi, Kiminobu Arima
1Division of Nephro-Urologic Surgery and Andrology, Department of Reparative and Regenerative Medicine, Institute of Medical Life Science, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, 2-174 Edobashi, Tsu, Mie 514-8507, Japan. uroclin@clin.medic.mie-u.ac.jp
Purpose:
To elucidate the crucial predictors for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) trends and determine the usage of anti-androgen treatment during delayed-combined androgen blockade (CAB) leading to a PSA level below 0.2 ng/mL.
Materials And Methods:
From January 2001 to December 2004, 105 prostate cancer patients were enrolled. Medical castration and anti-androgen treatment were used sequentially and termed delayed-CAB. The first goal was to maintain an undetectable PSA level. The nadir PSA was determined after medical castration only. Anti-androgen was given if a PSA level of more than 0.2 ng/mL was observed and the subsequent PSA response was assessed. All cases were divided into two groups based on whether the PSA was lower (n = 59) or higher (n = 46) than 0.2 ng/mL. An analysis of the difference between the two groups was calculated.
Results:
The median of the initial PSA level in the lower group was lower than in the higher group with a 95% cut-off level of 40 ng/mL. The median PSA half-life in the lower group was also reduced with a 95% cut-off of 3.6 months. In a multivariate analysis, the pretreatment PSA level and the PSA half-life exhibited a significant correlation between the two groups. Anti-androgen treatment was given to 26 cases in the higher group. The PSA increased in one case, decreased to less than 0.2 ng/mL in 17 cases and remained over 0.2 ng/mL in eight cases.
Conclusion:
Both the PSA half-life and the pretreatment PSA level were useful markers for predicting the PSA trends to determine the optimal use of anti-androgen treatment during delayed-CAB.
