Using age-referenced prostate-specific antigen percentile to predict survival outcomes in screened Taiwanese men

The survival outcomes of Asian men with elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels at screening are largely unknown. We present the clinical outcomes of Taiwanese men based on their screening PSA levels. Between 1994 and 2006, 27,761 men aged over 40 years underwent PSA screening in a self-funded health examination. The clinical database was linked with the national cancer and death registry databases to generate prostate cancer incidence, prostate cancer mortality (PCM) and overall mortality (OM). Participants were followed until the end of 2009. Survival analyses were performed for the participants' outcomes, and were stratified by five 10-year age strata (age 40-<50, 50-<60, 60-<70, 70-<80 and ≥80), and six age-referenced PSA percentile groups, divided by the 50th, 75th, 90th, 95th and 99th percentile of PSA values for each 10-year age stratum. The median age of the 27,761 men was 54.7 years. The median PSA level at cancer diagnosis was 4.46 ngml^-1. Specifically, the PSA levels for the five 10-year age strata in order of respectively increasing ages were 1.93, 3.50, 4.10, 6.94 and 12.4 ngml^-1. After a median follow-up of 8.4 years, 2,463 men died and 337 were diagnosed with prostate cancer. Among the 337 patients, 29 (8.6%) died of prostate cancer. The prostate cancer incidence, PCM and OM rates were higher in men with higher age-referenced PSA percentile values. The 10-year PCM rate for men with ≥ the 99th age-referenced PSA percentile was 3.9%, which was significantly higher than the rate of ≤ 0.5% in the lower percentile groups. What's new? Endometrial cancer is the most common cancer of the female reproductive tract. In this study the authors identified microRNA (miRNA) signatures that allow distinguishing between endometrioid endometrial cancer (EEC) and control tissues and plasma samples. The microRNA signatures were also significantly associated with patient relapse as well as overall and progression-free survival. Moreover, the work revealed associations of several miRNAs with clinicopathological characteristics, which contributes to the understanding of miRNAs involvement in EEC pathogenesis. The study suggests that miRNA signatures hold a great promise to become non-invasive biomarkers for early EEC detection and prognosis.