The Prostate Cancer Patient Had Higher C-Reactive Protein Than BPH Patient

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a general marker for inflammation and it has been associated with prostate cancer. We hypothesized that a correlation may exist between CRP and prostate cancer in patients undergoing transrectal biopsy of the prostate because of rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels.

From January 2009 to March 2012, we retrospectively reviewed 710 patients who visited our urology department and were diagnosed as having a PSA value over 4.0 ng/mL. Patients with acute infections, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, asthma, chronic lung disease, myocardial infarction, or apoplexy and those who had taken nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were exempted from the research because these variables could have impacted CRP. After we applied the exclusion criteria, we selected 63 patients with prostate cancer and 140 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).

A total of 203 patients were observed: 140 patients had BPH, and 63 patients had prostate cancer. Prostate cancer patients were divided into two groups by tumor-node-metastasis classification. The patients below T2 were group A, and those above T3 were group B. The natural logarithm of C-reactive protein (lnCRP) differed between the BPH group and the prostate cancer group. The lnCRP also differed between the BPH group and prostate cancer groups A and B (p<0.05).

The serum CRP level of the prostate cancer group was higher than that of the BPH group. Inflammation may be correlated with prostate cancer according to the serum CRP level.