Most of our readers have probably all been aware for some time that trained dogs are able to “diagnose” prostate cancer — with a high degree of accuracy — by smelling the urine of men who do and don’t have the disease. The same is true for some other cancers too — notably bladder cancer.
Back in 2014 we reported on research in Sweden about the use of an “eNose” as a mechanism to diagnose prostate cancer that was based on similar principles.
Now we have a paper (by Aggio et al.) from a research group in the UK suggesting that they are able to diagnose prostate cancer by gas chromatography — a widely used and very cost-effective scientific technique that is commonly used to identify specific chemicals in a sample or specimen.
Aggio et al. describe a gas chromatographic sensor-based (GCSB) system that can be used to classify urine samples from patients. So far they have tested this system in a pilot study involving 155 men who presented at urology clinics in the UK with sysmptoms of urologic disorders. Using theie GCSB system, they were able to categorize the men accurately into one of three groups:
- 58 were diagnosed with prostate cancer
- 24 were diagnosed with bladder cancer
- 73 were diagnosed with blood in their urine (hematuria) and/or poor stream, but without cancer.
The researchers used differing types of analysis to explore the accuracy of their diagnoses. By doing this they were able to show that:
- The GCSB system could diagnose prostate cancer with 95 percent sensitivity and 96 percent specificity.
- It could diagnose bladder cancer with 96 percent sensitivity and 100 percent specificity.
These are very high levels of accuracy. Way higher than anything that can be achieved by PSA testing.
Obviously there is more work to be done here before any such system could be incorporated into the standard methods for diagnosis of prostate cancer, but a test like this that could indicate risk for prostate and bladder cancers based on a simple urine sample could profoundly impact the need for PSA tests, prostate biopsies, and cystoscopic examinations for bladder cancer patients.
This is definitely a space that we need to keep watching. For more information, see this article on the Medical Daily web site.
Filed under: Diagnosis, Risk | Tagged: chromatography, Diagnosis, gas |
THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK 
Is there any indication the technique will be able to determine the grade of prostate cancer? Finding more indolent cancers may not be a good idea. The “rule out” cases are obviously a win.
As yet I do not think the researchers have got down to that level of detail. It may be a possibility, but we’d need to see a lot more research first.
Those levels of sensitivity and specificity are very high. Sounds too good to be true.
Dear Mark:
Interestingly, these levels of sensitivity and specificity are almost exactly identical to those achieved by the highly trained dogs in earlier studies, so it may not be as extraordinary as it initially sounds.