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University
of Mississippi researchers report that black American men
who have a normal digital rectal exam but a prostate specific
antigen (PSA) level of 4.0 or greater are more likely than
their white counterparts to in fact have prostate cancer.
The researchers
reported in the journal Cancer that they studied 451 black
and 480 white men with a normal DRE and a PSA of 4.0 or greater
who then had a biopsy, and that cancer was detected in 46
percent of the black compared to 35 percent of the white men.
They reported
that 20 percent of the black men, and 9 percent of the white
men, had a Gleason score between 7 and 10, indicating a more
malignant cancer was found in a greater number of the African
Americans.
The authors
said that their study showed that "prostate carcinomas
with established malignant potential are more likely to be
identified in black than in white men with PSA elevation as
the only indication of malignancy."
This raises
the potential, they suggested, of detecting more prostate
cancers at an earlier stage in black Americans by estblishing
a PSA threshold of less than 4.0 as the screening level at
which blacks should have a biopsy.
Source:
Prostate Cancer
Week of March 24, 2002
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