Diagnosis Of Prostate Disease Research Articles

Noninvasive PCA3 detection for screening prostate diseases using a graphene oxide-based method

Prostate Cancer Associated 3 (PCA3) as a promising biomarker to replace serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) for differential diagnosis of benign and malignant prostate diseases. However, the detection of PCA3 in urine requires the collection of digital rectal examination (DRE) urine, which limits the application of PCA3 in screening prostate diseases. In the present study, a new reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) method was developed for PCA3 detection in non-DRE urine. The method uses the nanomaterial Graphene oxide (GO) to effectively prevent nonspecific amplification in qRT-PCR. GO-based qRT-PCR produced no nonspecific amplification. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) results showed that the area under curve (AUC) of PCA3 to discriminate normal control subjects from prostate cancer (PCa) was 0.869 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.689–1.000), and using 2.711 as the cutoff value of PCA3, the sensitivity was 81.8% and the specificity was as high as 88.9%. For prostatitis (PTIS) and PCa, the AUC value of PCA3 to distinguish them was 0.636 (95% CI, 0.396–0.877), with 81.8% sensitivity and 58.3% specificity. Compared with the 8.3% specificity of PAS, the specificity of PCA3 was improved by 50%, which suggested that PCA3, in non-DRE urine, has a significant potential application in the differential diagnosis of prostate diseases.

(248) Analysis of Biomarkers (MMP-9, TIMP-1, Ki-67 and Type IV Collagen) in the Diagnosis of Prostate Diseases

Abstract Introduction The combination of inflammatory, benign and malignant processes in the prostate reduces the sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy of modern examination methods. The development of immunohistochemical methods (IHC) promotes the search for molecular markers that are diagnostically significant in various processes in the prostate. This will improve the detection of malignant neoplasms and reduce the number of "unnecessary" prostate biopsies. Objective to study in biopsies of patients with various prostate diseases the relationship of type 9 metalloproteinase (MMP-9) and its inhibitor (TIMP-1), the role of the Ki-67 protein proliferation level and the diagnostic value of the type IV collagen distribution indicator. Methods The study included 263 patients. They were divided into 4 groups: chronic prostatitis - 21 patients (mean age 65.2 ± 0.7 years), benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) - 65 patients (69.3 ± 1.1 years), BPH + prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) - 59 patients (68.9 ± 0.9 years), prostate adenocarcinoma (PC) - 118 patients (68.2 ± 0.9 years). IHC was used to analyze type 9 metalloproteinase (MMP-9) and its inhibitor (TIMP-1), the role of the Ki-67 protein proliferation level and the diagnostic value of the type IV collagen distribution indicator. Results BPH is characterized by high production of MMP-9 (intensity 3 points), lack of proliferative activity of the secretory cell layer (Ki-67 less than 3.24 ± 0.61%) and degradation of collagen IV of the basement membranes, which associated with a compensatory increase in the activity of the inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinases TIMP-1 (intensity 3 points). In prostate cancer, as neoplastic changes increase, the production of the Ki-67 protein significantly increases, reflecting the proliferative activity of the secretory cell layer (from 5.3 + 1.1% to 17.2 + 9.4%). With an increase in the Gleason number over the 3rd grade, collagen fibers around the tumor cells completely disappear. The production of MMP-9 type in adenocarcinomas is significantly reduced and the destruction of collagen IV of the basement membrane of glandular structures and stroma occurs due to a progressive (up to an intensity of 0.8 + 0.4 points as anaplastic changes increase) decrease in the production of the inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinases TIMP-1 (p≤0.05). High production of MMR-9 in BPH is blocked by a high content of the TIMP-1 inhibitor. In adenocarcinomas, the production of MMP-9 is significantly reduced, but this protease destroys collagen IV of the basement membrane of glandular structures due to the absence or weak production of TIMP-1, which blocks the proteolytic effect of this enzyme on connective tissue collagen. The low production of the TIMP-1 inhibitor in adenocarcinomas can also explain the invasive properties of these tumors. Conclusions Comprehensive analysis of biomarkers in IHC can improve the diagnosis of prostate cancer and reduce the number of "unnecessary" biopsies. Disclosure No.

Triad of serum PSA, DRE and biopsy in diagnosing prostatic diseases- How useful it is?

Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a glycoprotein produced by prostatic acini and prostatic tissue. Its concentration increases in prostatic diseases. Concentration above 4 ng/ml is considered abnormal but there is no clear-cut point between normal and abnormal PSA levels. PSA is considered as serum marker for prostatic cancer but it is organ specific, not cancer specific. Digital rectal examination (DRE) is a routine part of prostate cancer screening. Biopsies are performed when PSA test and DRE are abnormal. The study is an attempt for comparative analysis among serum PSA, age, DRE, and biopsy results for the institution of specific treatment at an early stage. Study was performed on 200 patients with different prostatic lesions in the Department of Pathology, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. Clinical, DRE, PSA and histopathological biopsy were performed and analyzed by correlating the data. In our study 77.5% had normal (0-4 ng/ml) PSA level and 13.5% had >10 ng/ml PSA levels. BPH was the most common diagnosis (54.0%), followed by prostatitis (20.0%), BPH with prostatitis in 16.0% and carcinoma (10.0%). Serum PSA with positive DRE ranged from 1.2 ng/ml to 56 ng/ml while in negative DRE ranged from 0.18 ng/ml to 9.6 ng/ml. PSA is specific for prostate but not for prostatic diseases. With increasing age serum PSA also increases. Conjunction of serum PSA with other variables like age, DRE and biopsy makes a better diagnosis of prostatic diseases.

CLINICOPATHOLOGIC DESCRIPTION OF PROSTATE DISEASES IN SANGLAH GENERAL HOSPITAL DENPASAR FROM 2018-2020

Prostate disease is one of the diseases with a high incidence among elderly men. . In establishing the diagnosis of prostate disease, histopathological and laboratory examinations are vital. These histopathological results can be grouped into 3, namely benign lesions, PIN, and carcinoma. This study aims to determine the clinicopathological description of prostate diseases at Sanglah Hospital Denpasar from 2018-2020. The cross-sectional research was conducted using the descriptive and analytic method. Samples were selected based on several inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 26 to obtain a general clinicopathological picture based on age, histopathological diagnosis, the relationship between age and histopathological, diagnosis, PSA level, and the relationship between PSA level with histopathological diagnosis, and grade group carcinoma. The results showed that the prostate disease with the most patients at Sanglah Hospital Denpasar from 2018-2020 occurred between the age of 70-79 years by 39,0% with the dominant histopathological diagnosis being benign prostate 240 (74,3%), followed by PIN 27 (8,4%), and carcinoma 56 (17,3%). There was no relationship found between age, mean age and histopathological diagnosis with p=0,881 and p=0,119. The highest PSA level was > 20ng/mL. It was found that the PSA level was significantly associated with histopathological diagnoses with a value of p=0,000. The most prevalent grade group characteristic was grade group 5 with 36 (64,3%).
 Keywords: Prostate Disease, Clinicopathologic, PSA Level

Multi-branch Context Awareness Network for Prostate MRI Segmentation

Prostate image segmentation is a precondition for the diagnosis of prostate diseases and subsequent treatment. However, the blurry organ edges and low image contrast make accurate segmentation difficult. In order to overcome the difficulties, this paper proposes an innovative Multi-branch Context Awareness Network (MBCA-Net) for prostate MRI segmentation. MBCA-Net uses the 3D UNet as the backbone network with an encoder-decoder framework. To improve the feature extraction capacity of the network, a multi-branch residual module with different convolution kernels is proposed. To better make use of extracted features and reduce semantic ambiguity, a context awareness module is used to fuse low-level features in the encoder and high-level features in the decoder in a full process manner. To improve the stability of the model during training, a mixed loss function is adopted. Experiments on the public dataset PROMISE12 show that our model’s Dice coefficient is 90.19%. Compared with other advanced techniques, the proposed model has better segmentation results.

Possibilities of early diagnosis of localized prostate cancer in outpatient practice of a urologist at the regional level in the stavropol territory

Aim. To develop and implement an algorithm for early diagnosis of a localized form of prostate cancer based on the determination of the specificity of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) marker in different age groups.Materials and methods. In the framework of a screening program for early detection of diseases of the urogenital system developed at the Stavropol Regional Clinical Specialized Uroandrological Center, middle-aged and elderly men were examined using the following characteristics: IPSS (International Prostate Symptom Score), serum PSA level, digital rectal exam, transrectal prostate ultrasound, urodynamic tests, as well as transrectal ultrasound-guided prostate biopsy in cases of elevated total PSA. The data (for 2010–2021) on the frequency of detection of localized prostate cancer depending on patient age (40–59 years, 60–69 years, ³70 years) and total PSA level were analyzed.Results. With an increase in total blood PSA >4 ng/ml, there is a clear trend towards a decrease in the detection of benign prostatic hyperplasia and an increase in the detection of adenocarcinoma, which is confirmed by the data of histological examinations of biopsy specimens. In 81 % of cases, transrectal multifocal biopsy of the prostate gland (adenocarcinoma and prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia was detected) under transrectal ultrasound control is justified, including when PSA values are in the “gray zone”, which shows a rather high value of this method.Conclusion. Total serum PSA level is a readily available indicator for differential diagnosis of prostate diseases including detection of localized prostate cancer in out-patient conditions. The obtained data points at high specificity of this marker in men over 40 years old. Measurement of serum PSA level at the age of 40–49 years is necessary for early detection of oncological pathology. For total serum PSA level >4 ng/mL, mandatory transrectal multifocal prostate biopsy is recommended at any age.

Automatic detection of prostate cancer grades and chronic prostatitis in biparametric MRI

Background and objective:With emerging evidence to improve prostate cancer (PCa) screening, multiparametric magnetic prostate imaging is becoming an essential noninvasive component of the diagnostic routine. Computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) tools powered by deep learning can help radiologists interpret multiple volumetric images. In this work, our objective was to examine promising methods recently proposed in the multigrade prostate cancer detection task and to suggest practical considerations regarding model training in this context.Methods:We collected 1647 fine-grained biopsy-confirmed findings, including Gleason scores and prostatitis, to form a training dataset. In our experimental framework for lesion detection, all models utilized 3D nnU-Net architecture that accounts for anisotropy in the MRI data. First, we explore an optimal range of b-values for diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) modality and its effect on the detection of clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) and prostatitis using deep learning, as the optimal range is not yet clearly defined in this domain. Next, we propose a simulated multimodal shift as a data augmentation technique to compensate for the multimodal shift present in the data. Third, we study the effect of incorporating the prostatitis class alongside cancer-related findings at three different granularities of the prostate cancer class (coarse, medium, and fine) and its impact on the detection rate of the target csPCa. Furthermore, ordinal and one-hot encoded (OHE) output formulations were tested.Results: An optimal model configuration with fine class granularity (prostatitis included) and OHE has scored the lesion-wise partial Free-Response Receiver Operating Characteristic (FROC) area under the curve (AUC) of 1.94 (CI 95%: 1.76–2.11) and patient-wise ROC AUC of 0.874 (CI 95%: 0.793–0.938) in the detection of csPCa. Inclusion of the auxiliary prostatitis class has demonstrated a stable relative improvement in specificity at a false positive rate (FPR) of 1.0 per patient, with an increase of 3%, 7%, and 4% for coarse, medium, and fine class granularities.Conclusions: This paper examines several configurations for model training in the biparametric MRI setup and proposes optimal value ranges. It also shows that the fine-grained class configuration, including prostatitis, is beneficial for detecting csPCa. The ability to detect prostatitis in all low-risk cancer lesions suggests the potential to improve the quality of the early diagnosis of prostate diseases. It also implies an improved interpretability of the results by the radiologist.

Possibilities of Transperineal (Transperineal) Echography in The Diagnosis of Prostate Diseases

The possibilities of transperineal (transperineal) ultrasonic examination of the prostate gland in it is various pathological conditions were investigated. The analysis included ultrasound data of 92 male patients with various pathologies of the prostate gland in the period from 2018 to 2022. Patients underwent an ultrasound examination of the pelvic organs, including a transabdominal examination and, subsequently, a transperineal examination. Transabdominal examination was not possible in the presence of a postoperative wound, after surgery on the bladder, the presence of drainage, inflammation in the suprapubic region, the patient's obesity, and the presence of flatulence. Empty or empty bladder due to bladder failure. A large body weight and a large fat layer on the abdomen also made it difficult to examine the prostate gland. A visual comparison of the transabdominal and transperineal ultrasound methods for examining the prostate gland in its various pathological conditions is presented.

A two-stage CNN method for MRI image segmentation of prostate with lesion

Prostate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used in the diagnosis of prostate cancer and other prostate diseases. The automatic segmentation of images from prostate MRI plays an important role in the auxiliary diagnosis of prostate diseases. Currently, there are two commonly used methods for automatic segmentation of prostate MRI, which are 2D image segmentation and 3D image segmentation. In this paper, a two-stage CNN method for MRI image segmentation of prostate with lesion is proposed. At the first stage, we used a CNN model incorporating the Squeeze-Excitation module to discriminate whether the image contains prostate or not. At the second stage, we proposed a Residual-Attention U-Net for segmentation of images containing prostate. Eventually, the 3D prostate MRI segmentation results are obtained and fully automated segmentation is accomplished. We evaluated our proposed method and other common 2D and 3D segmentation methods on the test dataset and compared their results based on Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) value. Our method performed the best and achieved the DSC metric value of 0.860.

Clinical signs associated with prostatic disorders in canines: Retrospective study in Uruguay (2011-2019).

Prostate disease represents about 0.7% of diseases in canines. The main diagnosed pathology is benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). However, the reports that study the association of a certain clinical sign with a specific prostate disease are scarce. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical relevance of the most commonly observed clinical signs associated with the different prostatic disorders in canines admitted to the hospital of the Facultad de Veterinaria-Universidad de la República between 2011 and 2019. This retrospective study included 7,729 male canines treated at the hospital de la Facultad de Veterinaria-Universidad de la República (Montevideo, Uruguay) between 2011 and 2019. 289 canines with a presumptive/definitive diagnosis of prostate diseases were selected, recording the presence/absence of associated clinical signs. Results were reported in terms of odds ratios (ORs) using logistic regression (p < 0.05). The five most frequently reported clinical signs were tenesmus (34%), anorexia (32%), lethargy (27%), prostatomegaly or pain during rectal examination (25%), and abdominal pain from palpation (22%). Diarrhea (3.39 vs. 0.33 OR), anorexia (2.07 vs. 0.39 OR), weight loss (2.27 vs. 0.27 OR), hematuria (3.25 vs. 0.44 OR), and urinary incontinence (2.96 vs. 0.33 OR) indicated a highest predictive value (p < 0.05) with prostatitis versus BPH, respectively. Being weight loss, the clinical sign is more frequently associated with neoplasia (20.2 OR, p = 0.002). This study shows that there are clinical signs with a higher degree of association for certain canine prostatic disorders than others.

Prostate biopsy and its outcome in a tertiary hospital in southern Nigeria

Background: Diagnosis of prostatic diseases is via a prostate biopsy and subsequent histology. So, a prostate biopsy should be carried out to get a histological diagnosis when indicated. Materials and Methods: This is a five-year retrospective study conducted at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. Ethical approval for the study was sought and gotten from the hospital’s ethical committee. The information gotten included history, duration of symptoms, examination findings, age of the patient, Gleason grade and histological diagnosis. The data from the folders were collected and evaluated. Frequencies, percentages, the mean and standard deviation were used to summarize the data as appropriate. Results: The age range was from 45 to 96 years with a mean age of 68.10 ± 9.11 years. A hundred and fifty patients had prostate cancer. The commonest grade of cancer was the Gleason grade 5 (46.67%). No statistically significant relationship between Gleason grade and age. Conclusion: The mean age of patients in this study was 68.10 ± 9.11. Over 50% of patients biopsied had prostate cancer, and 46.67% had a high-grade disease. Health awareness campaigns and screening programs in Africa to make people aware of prostatic diseases. Earlier presentation to the hospital when symptomatic will lead to better treatment.

18 F-DCFPyL positron emissiontomography/magnetic resonanceimaging-guided ultrasound fusion biopsy is an identical pathway in prostate cancer diagnosis.

Prostate biopsy is still unavoidable in patients with a rising prostate-specific antigeneven thoughmultiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)is widely used. 18 F-DCFPyL positron emission tomography (PET)/MRIwas proved to be promising both in sensitivity and specificity. But its guiding fusion biopsy and the advantages in the diagnosis of prostate disease is seldom reported. This study aimed to verify the feasibility and advantage of 18 F-DCFPyLPET/MRI-guided fusion targeted biopsy (TB) over whole-mount histopathology (WMH) for prostate cancer diagnosis. A prospective study of 94 biopsy-naïve patients were conducted using 18 F-DCFPyL PET/MRI scans and scored on a scale of 1-4. Systematic biopsy was performed for all patients. Patients with suspicious lesions also underwent PET/MRI/transrectal ultrasound-guided fusion biopsy. Patients with pathologically confirmed cancer underwent surgery and WMHsections. Systematic biopsy was compared with TBfor the detection of index tumors (ITs). Significant cancer was defined as Grade group (GG) 2 or higher no matter the length of the cancer core. 18 F-DCFPyL PET/MRIdetected 30/94 (32%) patients with a score of 4, all of whom were verified to have prostate cancer. While it detected 10patients with a score of 1 (10.6%), they were shown to have no cancer. The sensitivity and specificity of 18 F-DCFPyLPET/MRIwere 94.4% and 75%, respectively, if images with a score of 3 are defined as positive. Systematic biopsy detected 18% (203/1128) samples as prostate cancer; conversely, TBdetected 113 samples out of 259 scores (43.6%). A statistically significant difference was seen between the PCa detection rates by TB and SB (p < 0.001). All targeted lesions were pathologically proven to be the ITon WMH. In biopsy-naïve patients, the ultrasound fusion biopsy targeted by 18 F-DCFPyLPET/MRIis an identical pathway for the detection of prostate cancer.

Assessment of the possibility of using biomarkers (CCL11 and TGF-beta 1) in the diagnosis of prostate gland hyperplasia in dogs

Prostatic hyperplasia (PH) is the most common reproductive disorder in dogs and can lead to discomforting problems such as haematuria, urinary incontinence, constipation, difficulty in defecating and stiffness of the hind limbs. The diagnosis of PH is nowadays based on digital rectal examination (DRE), ultrasonography (US) and radiography (X-ray). However, markers associated with PH are barely used for diagnostic purposes. Recently, there have been reports on the use of certain biomarkers for diagnosing PH in dogs such as canine PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen), microRNA and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Nevertheless, it has been generally accepted that these biomarkers play only an auxiliary role. Accordingly, the aim of our study was to evaluate the usefulness of the CCL11 (eotaxin-1) and TGF-beta 1 markers, which are used in the diagnosis of prostate diseases in humans, in case of dogs with PH. The study was carried out on 40 dogs of different breeds divided into three groups. Group I (n = 9) comprised dogs up to 5 years of age without changes indicative of PH. Group II (n = 17) included dogs aged 5–10 that were examined and diagnosed with (PH) and Group III (n = 14) which consisted of dogs over 10 years of age who were also diagnosed with PH. The study demonstrated that CCL11 levels did not differ significantly between the study groups and the median levels were 7.27 pg/mL, 7.57 pg/mL, 6.81 pg/mL, and IQR ranges 1.55 pg/mL, 1.74 pg/mL, 2.32 pg/mL, respectively. In contrast, TGF-beta 1 levels were detectable only in 6 dogs of group III and averaged the median of 28.86 pg/mL, IQR ranges 10.07 pg/mL. The study proved that CCL11 and TGF-beta 1 markers are of a limited use when diagnosing PH in dogs as no significant correlation related to age, body weight or prostate size was found.

Evaluation of the Efficiency of MRI-Based Radiomics Classifiers in the Diagnosis of Prostate Lesions.

ObjectiveTo compare the performance of different imaging classifiers in the prospective diagnosis of prostate diseases based on multiparameter MRI.MethodsA total of 238 patients with pathological outcomes were enrolled from September 2019 to July 2021, including 142 in the training set and 96 in the test set. After the regions of interest were manually segmented, decision tree (DT), Gaussian naive Bayes (GNB), XGBoost, logistic regression, random forest (RF) and support vector machine classifier (SVC) models were established on the training set and tested on the independent test set. The prospective diagnostic performance of each classifier was compared by using the AUC, F1-score and Brier score.ResultsIn the patient-based data set, the top three classifiers of combined sequences in terms of the AUC were logistic regression (0.865), RF (0.862), and DT (0.852); RF “was significantly different from the other two classifiers (P =0.022, P =0.005), while logistic regression and DT had no statistical significance (P =0.802). In the lesions-based data set, the top three classifiers of combined sequences in terms of the AUC were RF (0.931), logistic regression (0.922) and GNB (0.922). These three classifiers were significantly different from.ConclusionThe results of this experiment show that radiomics has a high diagnostic efficiency for prostate lesions. The RF classifier generally performed better overall than the other classifiers in the experiment. The XGBoost and logistic regression models also had high classification value in the lesions-based data set.

Optical fiber peptide-sensor for ultrasensitive detection of prostate specific antigen

We develop the first optical fiber-based peptisensor with chemiluminescent detection, and apply it for ultrasensitive detection of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), an important biomarker for early diagnosis of prostate disease. Optical fiber is used not only as the carrier of the biological recognition elements (the specific biotinylated peptides, bio-KQLKSSHC), but also for the excellent light conduction for chemiluminescence signal output. The peptisensor is easily fabricated and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) modified with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) are employed as the signal label for chemiluminescent detection. By combining the streptavidin-biotin system and the large surface area of AuNPs, both the peptide loading amount and the chemiluminescence signal are enhanced, thus the response of the peptisensor is greatly improved with a wide linear range of 0.80 pg/mL −100 ng/mL (2.42 ×10−9-3.03 ×10−4 nmol) and a low limit-of-detection of 0.30 pg/mL (9.09 ×10−10 nmol). The HRP@AuNPs@peptide optical fiber peptisensor exhibiting good reproducibility and selectivity for PSA assays. Our study indicates that the optical fiber-based peptisensors would be of value for sensitive detection of biomarkers with advantages of low-cost, easy operation and possibly for miniaturization, thus would they have great potential application in vitro diagnosis.

Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inferential Approach for the Diagnosis of Prostate Diseases

In this study, Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy Inferential System (ANFIS) is adapted for diagnosing prostate diseases. The system involves generating and tuning a fuzzy inference system to handle the imprecise terms used for describing prostate cases and severity. Several diagnostic variables were used to learn the feature statistics present in a typical data, while the trained model was validated and adapted for testing new prostate cases. A total of 335 data from patients’ records were collected at the Medi Moses Prostate Centre, Kumasi Ghana. The dataset was partitioned into 70% which was used for model training, and the other 30% was utilized in the validation phase. The proposed model was implemented in the MATLAB environment. Evaluation result from the proposed system demonstrated that the system achieved an accurate diagnostic result with an RMSE value of 11%. This indicates that the system has a relatively high accuracy and could be accepted for prostate diagnosis. Furthermore, the model was able to learn well and generalize the features in the data set, making the proposed ANFIS model suitable for new cases. Performance analysis showed that the ANFIS is well suited for handling the crispy values used in prostate diagnosis; thus, it can be extensively employed in other similar areas of medical diagnosis.

Smartphone-Based Electrochemical Biosensors for Directly Detecting Serum-Derived Exosomes and Monitoring Their Secretion.

Exosomes are potential biomarkers, which play an important role in early diagnosis and prognosis prediction of cancer-related diseases. Nevertheless, direct quantification of exosomes in biological fluid, especially in point-of-care tests (POCTs), remains extremely challenging. Herein, we developed a sensitive and portable electrochemical biosensor in combination with smartphones for quantitative analysis of exosomes. The improved double-antibody sandwich method-based poly-enzyme signal amplification was adopted to detect exosomes. We could detect as low as 7.23 ng of CD63-positive exosomes in 5 μL of serum within 2 h. Importantly, we demonstrated that the biosensor worked well with microliter-level serum and cell culture supernatant. The biosensor holds great potential for the detection of CD-63-expressing exosomes in early diagnosis of prostate disease because CD63-positive exosomes were less detected from the prostate patient serum. Also, the biosensor was used to monitor the secretion of exosomes with the drug therapy, showing a close relationship between the secretion of exosomes and the concentration of cisplatin. The biosensing platform provides a novel way toward POCT for the diagnosis and prognosis prediction of prostate disease and other diseases via biomarker expression levels of exosomes.

MicroRNA and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) as new useful markers in the diagnosis of benign prostatic hyperplasia in dogs

Numerous specific biomarkers with a prognostic and diagnostic value comparable to histopathological findings are now used for non-invasive diagnosis of prostate diseases in humans. Meanwhile, as far as dogs are concerned, the diagnosis of prostate disorders is based solely on clinical examination and ultrasound (USG). Therefore, the aim of the study was to assess the usefulness of two biomarkers, i.e. miRNA-129 and VEGF for the diagnosis of BPH in dogs. The study involved 40 dogs divided into three groups. Group I (n = 9) comprised healthy dogs up to the age of 5 years, Group II (n = 17) comprised dogs between the ages of 5–10 suffering from BPH as confirmed by the examination and Group III (n = 14) comprising dogs over 10 years of age, which also had BPH confirmed. The results demonstrated that dogs in group II and III exhibited a significant decrease in miRNA expression (P < 0.0001) and a significant increase in serum VEGF levels (P = 0.025) when compared to the dogs in group I. There was also a positive correlation between the prostate size and VEGF level. The findings led to the conclusion that the determination of miRNA-129 and VEGF can significantly contribute to the diagnosis of prostate disorders in dogs.

Accuracy of digital rectal examination to diagnose prostate cancer confirmed by needle biopsy reports: A 3–year hospital-based study

Background: Digital rectal examination (DRE) is an indispensable tool for provisional diagnosis of prostate diseases. When abnormal prostate examination findings are elicited, a diagnosis of prostate cancer (Pca) is usually entertained and further tests to confirm or rule out the presence of Pca demands histological examination of biopsied tissue. A combination of DRE findings and serum PSA increases the predictive value for Pca diagnosis. In this study, we evaluated the degree of accuracy of DRE to diagnose Pca confirmed by histology reports of biopsy specimens.&#x0D; Materials and Methods: Two hundred and six (206) patients were studied over a period of three years. Information retrieved from their case notes were entered into a well-structured protocol for management of prostatic diseases. Analysis of variables collated was performed with the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. Frequency table was used to analyze categorical variables while descriptive statistics was used for continuous variables. Level of significance was set at P&lt;.05.&#x0D; Results: 206 patients were studied with mean age of 68.23±8.71 years ranging from 48 to 91 years. Men in the Pca group were older than those in the BPH group. Abnormal DRE was associated with high grade tumours, and high level of aggressive tumour characteristics by WHO grade group standard.&#x0D; Conclusion: DRE has a high level of accuracy in predicting a diagnosis of Pca which was confirmed by histology reports especially in prostates with abnormal findings.

Highlights on the Canine Prostatic Specific Esterase (CPSE): A diagnostic and screening tool in veterinary andrology.

In the last years, the need to look for an accurate and precise diagnosis of prostatic diseases in dogs has grown. Among other diagnostic tools, the seric CPSE has been studied and identified as a valid and specific biomarker for prostatic disorders, since it can result significantly more elevated in dogs affected by several prostatic abnormalities, such as benign prostatic hyperplasia, bacterial prostatitis and prostatic carcinoma. Therefore, dosing CPSE in serum represents a new diagnostic and screening tool. Dosing CPSE in everyday clinical practice has three objectives: (a) the diagnosis of benign prostatic hyperplasia; (b) the preventive screening of prostatic disorders in healthy dogs; (c) the medical follow‐up in subjects with prostatic disorders during and after medical therapy. Neither circadian rhythms nor transrectal palpation performed during the andrological examination do affect CPSE. A sexual rest of at least 24 hr before dosing CPSE is recommended as it is affected by ejaculation.