Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 4, 2026

Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer
Published on: November 2, 2013
ON THE ISSUE OF NECESSITY TO PERFORM THE DR-70 IMMUNOASSAY PRIOR TO PROSTATE BIOPSY IN PATIENTS WITH HIGH PROSTATE
1Sultan Abdulhamid Han Education and Research Hospital, Department of Urology, Istanbul, Turkey.
Abstract:
The aim is to discuss the contribution of the DR-70 for the patients with high PSA level and which cutofflevel of DR-70 must be consideredthe biopsy decision. 93 patients with high prostate specific antigen level were enrolled into the study. Before the prostate biopsy, total PSA (tPSA), free PSA (fPSA), free/total PSA rate (f/tPSA), PSA density (PSAD) and DR-70 levels were recorded. The patients were divided into two groups according to the pathological outcome of benign (G1) or malignant (G2). G1 and G2 were compared with Mann-Whitney U test, Spearman's rho and ROC curve for analysis. The significance level is taken as .05 for all tests. The median age of patients in G1 and G2 was 62.52 and 68.22 years, respectively. The mean PV in G1 and G2 were 52.16 and 39.6 mL, respectively. The mean tPSA, PSAD and DR-70 levels in G1 and G2 were found as 7.19 and 18.74 ng/mL, 0.14 and 0.48 ng/mL/cc and 0.44 and 0.5 µg/mL, respectively. The mean age of the patients in G2 was statistically significantly higher than G1 (p=.001).The mean PV of the patients in G2 was statistically significantly lower than G1 (p=.001).The mean PSAD of the patients in G2 was statistically significantly higher than G1 (p=.001). There was no statistically significant difference on DR-70 levelsbetween G1 and G2 (p=.38). In Spearman's rhocorrelationanalysis, there was nostatistically significant relationships between DR-70 levels and pathology results in G2 (p=.24). ROC curve of tPSA, fPSA, f/tPSA, PSAD and DR-70 levelswere evaluated. ROC curve of PSAD shows a fair discriminant power with AUC = 0.71 (95% CI: 0.607-0.828) for differentiation between PCa and benign tissue in prostate biopsy with moderate specificity and high sensitivity (62.5% and 75.7%, resp., cut-off level: 0.1377 ng/mL). Contrary to literature and guidelines, cutoff level of PSAD as 0.13ng/mL/cc should be kept in mind and accordingly, a biopsy decision should be made. We think that DR-70 is no needed for additional evaluation before prostate biopsy.

