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Relationships between total/free prostate-specific antigen and prostate volume in Chinese men with biopsy-proven
Qiqi Mao1, Xiangyi Zheng, Xiaolong Jia
1Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, 310003, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.
Objective:
This study investigated relationships between total prostate-specific antigen (tPSA), free prostate-specific antigen (fPSA), and prostate volume (PV) in Chinese men with biopsy-proven BPH, and analyzed whether fPSA performed better than tPSA at estimating thresholds of PV.
Materials And Methods:
From 2003 to 2008, a total of 286 patients with a PSA less than 10 ng/ml and biopsy proven benign prostatic hyperplasia were included in this study. The relationships between age, PV, tPSA, and fPSA were analyzed using the Pearson correlation coefficient (r). Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to evaluate and compare the ability of serum tPSA and fPSA to estimate thresholds of PV in men with biopsy-proven BPH.
Results:
Among relationships between tPSA, fPSA, age, and PV, the highest correlation was found between fPSA and PV (r = 0.456, P < 0.001); the correlation coefficient was much lower between tPSA and PV (r = 0.278, P < 0.001). The ROC curves revealed that the performance of fPSA at predicting threshold prostate sizes (30, 40, and 50 ml) showed areas under the curve (AUC) ranging from 0.72 to 0.75, denoting better discrimination of PV than that achieved by use of tPSA.
Conclusion:
Although tPSA significantly correlated with PV in Chinese men with biopsy-proven BPH, the correlation between fPSA and PV was much stronger, and fPSA performed significantly better than tPSA at predicting thresholds of PV. fPSA may be used to estimate PV and could be a useful tool in making therapeutic decisions in Chinese men with BPH.
