Detecting prostate cancer with a micro-chip ? well, maybe (or ...

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Sitemaster

According to an article in Men?s Health News, some Italian researchers at the University of Parma have developed a chip that?s able to detect a suspected marker of aggressive prostate cancer, called sarcosine, in urine.

Now this would be wonderful if there was clear evidence that elevated levels of sarcosine in urine were actually clearly associated with an increased risk for prostate cancer ? but as far as we are aware that is not in fact the case.

There were some data about 3 years ago suggesting that elevated levels of sarcosine might have some relevance as a prostate cancer screening methodology, but follow-up research later suggested that this could not be clearly demonstrated with any degree of reliability.

For the benefit of those who are interested, we have tracked down the original paper by Biavardi et al. that describes their silicon chip, but until there is some very clear evidence that sarcosine levels in urine can be predictive for risk of prostate cancer, this research looks to be something of a waste of time (other that as proof of principle that such chips can be developed).

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Filed under: Diagnosis, Risk Tagged: | chip, Diagnosis, risk, sarcosine, silicon

Source: http://prostatecancerinfolink.net/2012/03/07/detecting-prostate-cancer-with-a-micro-chip-well-maybe-or-maybe-not/

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