Pretreatment T level and post-surgical pathologic stage: a prognostic relationship?
Posted Dec 08 2010 12:00am
A new study by a French research team has suggested that there may be a prognostic relationship between the pretreatment testosterone (T) level and the post-surgical pathology of men who undergo radical prostatectomy (RP) for treatment of localized prostate cancer.
Xylinas et al. studied the serum androgen concentrations in a cohort of 107 patients who had undergone a laparoscopic RP after an initial diagnosis of clinically localized prostate cancer. They categorized the patients into two groups based on the serum T levels:
Group A included all patients with a serum T level of < 3 ng/ml.
Group B included all patients with a serum T level of ≥ 3 ng/ml.
All patients had localized prostate cancer based on their digital rectal examination (DRE) and preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The results of the analysis by Xylinas et al. were as follows:
Patients in Groups A and B were similar in terms of age, body mass index, co-morbidity, clinical stage of prostate cancer, and preoperative PSA levels.
In pathological specimens, low total testosterone (< 3 ng/ml) was an independent risk factor for high Gleason score (> 7) and for locally advanced pathological stage (pT3 and pT4).
Higher preoperative serum T levels correlated with disease confined to the prostate gland.
There was no association between serum T levels and surgical margin status or between serum T levels and biochemical recurrence.
The authors conclude that low serum T levels appear to be predictive of more aggressive forms of prostate cancer (Gleason score >7) and extraprostatic disease (pT3 and higher) in patients who underwent RP for localized prostate cancer.
It would be interesting to know if these results could be replicated in other (and preferably larger) series of well-defined patients.
A new study by a French research team has suggested that there may be a prognostic relationship between the pretreatment testosterone (T) level and the post-surgical pathology of men who undergo radical prostatectomy (RP) for treatment of localized prostate cancer.
Xylinas et al. studied the serum androgen concentrations in a cohort of 107 patients who had undergone a laparoscopic RP after an initial diagnosis of clinically localized prostate cancer. They categorized the patients into two groups based on the serum T levels:
All patients had localized prostate cancer based on their digital rectal examination (DRE) and preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The results of the analysis by Xylinas et al. were as follows:
The authors conclude that low serum T levels appear to be predictive of more aggressive forms of prostate cancer (Gleason score >7) and extraprostatic disease (pT3 and higher) in patients who underwent RP for localized prostate cancer.
It would be interesting to know if these results could be replicated in other (and preferably larger) series of well-defined patients.