Prostate cancer may be indolent, justifying a “wait and see” approach, or it may be aggressive, warranting decisive action up to and including prostatectomy. The problem is, it can be hard to tell which, even after prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening and histological analysis of biopsy tissue. Among the men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer, more than 70% are likely to have less aggressive tumors that follow an indolent course, and about 17% have aggressive, potentially fatal disease. A different kind of test—one that may better distinguish between indolent and aggressive prostate cancer—has been proposed by scientists based at Massachusetts General Hospital. This test uses magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to generate metabolomic profiles. MRS, the scientists have reported, can measure disease-related metabolic alterations to determine the grade and stage of a tumor. MRS can also predict a tumor’s risk of recurrence. Details about the new test appeared ...
Original Article: Prostate Cancer Aggressiveness May Be Assessed by Probing the Metabolome