New Non-Invasive Saliva Test for Early and Accurate Detection of Prostate Cancer Presented at AACC 2021

A new non-invasive test that uses saliva samples to accurately diagnose cases of prostate cancer was presented at the 2021 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo.

The test developed by researchers at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences (Tehran, Iran) could allow clinicians to better distinguish early-stage prostate cancer from more benign prostate conditions.

A key challenge in cancer care is the diagnosis of prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers in men. Clinicians currently use invasive biopsies or tests for prostate-specific antigen levels to diagnose prostate cancer in the clinic. But prostate cancer can be hard to spot during the early stages and can be tricky to distinguish from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), a benign enlargement of the prostate that can appear as men age.

In an effort to solve these issues, researchers have developed a new test for prostate cancer that uses saliva samples, which can be collected repeatedly and non-invasively. Their test distinguishes prostate cancer from BPH by testing saliva for eight different microRNAs that either support or suppress tumor growth. The researchers validated their test with saliva samples from 180 men between 45 and 50 years of age, 60 of whom had been diagnosed with prostate cancer using standard methods and 60 of whom had been diagnosed with BPH.

“The advantage of our study is the use of several microRNAs, which have been reported to be detectable in the blood much earlier than the progression of cancer, which makes for a better diagnosis, as well as the use of saliva as a non-invasive biological sample that causes little pain to patients,” said Dr. Jamal Amri of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

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Tehran University of Medical Sciences