IJU this issue

Abstract

This issue contains three Review Articles, five Original Articles, one Case Report and one Urological Note. The Review Articles are all informative. The review by Fujita and Nonomura (Suita, Japan) focused on urinary biomarkers of prostate cancer. Urine is a very good source for biomarkers because of its non-invasiveness. Prostate cancer is typically a cancer of elderly men. As the detection rate of prostate cancer in the gray zone is 30–40%, non-invasive biomarker tests, other than the prostate-specific antigen test, are desired. Fujita and Nonomura introduced several urinary biomarkers, including commercially available biomarkers. Tsuzuki et al. (Nagakute, Japan) mentioned kidney cancers in end-stage renal disease. Acquired cystic disease-associated kidney cancer is recognized as an independent entity. Japanese urologists more often encounter acquired cystic disease-associated kidney cancers because in Japan hemodialysis for end-stage renal disease is more popular than in other developed countries due to less cadaveric renal transplantation. In that sense, this Review Article is very important, especially for Japanese urologists. Lambert et al. (Ghent, Belgium) discussed the usefulness of a uroflowmetry-based prediction model for the diagnosis of urethral stricture in men. This study is very practical for daily clinics, and it is accompanied by an Editorial Comment from Kanematsu. The Original Article by Zhang et al. (Jinan, China) is a basic research paper on amyloid precursor protein mimicking the possibility of therapeutic target for bladder cancer. Of course, the other four Original Articles are also interesting and important. The Urological Note by Chang et al. (Taichung, Taiwan) approached the correlation between urinary stones and pelvic organ prolapse in women, and the results are very challenging. As mentioned in the Editorial Comments, this study might contain possible bias and conveys the problems of missing individual laboratory data of patients, although this is the largest study based on the National Health Insurance Research Database. I cannot introduce all the articles because of the limited space of the issue. However, all the articles in this issue are valuable and worth being published in IJU. None declared.