Refined PSA Screening Strategies May Catch More Aggressive Cases

The number of new cases of metastatic prostate cancer climbed 72 percent from 2004 to 2013, according to a controversial new study published July 19 in Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases. The investigators say they can’t definitively link the increased cases to reduced prostate cancer screening and the rise could reflect the disease becoming more aggressive. However, the largest increase in new cases was among men 55 to 69 years old, which rose 92 percent. Germline Testing Should Be Offered With Metastatic Prostate Cancer Germline genetic testing should be offered to all men with metastatic prostate cancer, regardless of age at diagnosis or familial prostate cancer history, according to a study published July 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Not only did the authors identify a significant association between advanced prostate cancer and mutations in germline DNA repair genes, but these mutations also may identify families with a predisposition to other cancer types. The multi-institutional group of researchers sequenced germline DNA exomes from 692 men with documented metastatic prostate cancer. Multiplex sequencing assays assessed mutations in 20 DNA-repair genes associated with autosomal dominant cancerpredisposition syndromes. They found 84 germline DNA-repair gene mutations (presumed to be deleterious) in 11.8 […]