Prostate cancer test improves prediction of dise...( A new prostate cancer risk assessmen...),Health

A new prostate cancer risk assessment test, developed by a UCSF team, gives patients and their doctors a better way of gauging long-term risks and pinpointing high risk cases.

According to UCSF study findings, published this week, the test proved accurate in predicting bone metastasis, prostate cancer-specific mortality, and all-cause mortality when localized prostate cancer is first diagnosed. The test is known as the UCSF Cancer of the Prostate Risk Assessment, or CAPRA.

The study, involving 10,627 men, is reported in the June 9 online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"This test should help physicians and their patients predict the likely course of the individual's disease," said Matthew R. Cooperberg, MD, MPH, lead investigator of the study. Cooperberg, who helped develop the risk assessment test, is a prostate cancer specialist in the UCSF Department of Urology and the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"In this study, we looked at the CAPRA score's ability to predict mortality across multiple forms of treatment. It should help patients and clinicians decide which tumors need to be treated, and how aggressively. We also hope that in the research setting it can serve as a well-validated and consistent means of classifying men into low, intermediate and high risk groups."

Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men and the second most common cause of cancer death after lung cancer. This year, an estimated 192,280 men will be diagnosed with the disease, and 27,360 men will die from it, according to the American Cancer Society.

While prostate cancers are ultimately lethal, most men diagnosed actually die of other causes. Because of the highly variable nature of the disease, risk assessment to calculate the chances of cancer progression takes on heightened importance when a patient is diagnosed, said Cooperberg. At the time of diagnosis, only 5 pe
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