ORLANDO, FL USA (UroToday.com) - Dr. Michael Liss, a urologic oncology fellow at University of California-Irvine, presented his work evaluating the benefit of screening men with family history (FH) of prostate cancer.
He was able to quantitate this benefit by post-hoc analysis of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial patients, which randomized > 76,000 men to PSA-screening versus usual care. He first validated that the PLCO patients were going to be a valid population by showing that African American patients had a 2.6-fold increased odds ratio (OR) of prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM). 5,326 PLCO patients (7%) had a positive FH of prostate cancer. 
Patients with FH of prostate cancer who were also diagnosed with prostate cancer on average had lower PSA at diagnosis, more favorable Gleason score, and shorter time to diagnosis after entry into PLCO (all statistically significant) compared to those without FH of prostate cancer. There was a 50% reduction in PCSM, however this was not statistically significant (p=0.07).
He closed by suggesting that identification of high-risk patients based on clinical parameters might be augmented by novel biomarkers for further risk stratification.
Presented by Michael Liss at the American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting - May 16 - 21, 2014 - Orlando, Florida USA
La Jolla, CA USA
Written by Philip Abbosh, MD, PhD, medical writer for UroToday.com
