Obesity sabotages prostate test

[JI7]

<Obesity may affect the accuracy of a screening test for prostate cancer, research suggests.

The test looks for raised levels of a chemical called prostate specific antigen (PSA), which can be sign of cancer.

However, the test is far from infallible, and now University of Texas researchers have found obesity is associated with lower PSA levels.

Obesity is thought to increase the risk of the disease.

Obese men with prostate cancer also tend to have a poorer prognosis than others.

This might be linked to the fact that the disease is often not picked up in obese men until it has reached an advanced stage. >


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4191237.stm

[imenja]

1. I heard a study that said prostate tests in general are only 10% accurate

Doesn't seem like they are worth bothering with.

[daleo]

2. Yes, somewhat like routine breast cancer screeing and some others.

It is arguable whether these measures are actually beneficial at the population level. They result in a lot of invasive procedures, that turn out to have not been necessary. Every invasive procedure has some risk attached, including risk of death. Some of these measures seem to cause more death and suffering than they prevent.

There is a substantial literature on the subject. Lots of people don't like the level of ambiguity about medical procedures that such results imply, though, so they resist the implications strenuously.

[JI7]

3. how do they find out if they have cancer then ?

are there different tests which are more costly which tell you for sure whether you have it ?

[daleo]

4. Issue isn't testing, but routine screening of entire healthy populations.

As risk factors, such as age or genetics, go up then testing is more likely to find actual tumors rather than various benign things such as cysts, mis-read X-rays and so forth. Also, most people go to the doctor in response to actual symptoms such as lumps, ill health and so forth, which increases the likelihood that a diagnostic finding is an indication of illness.

I am not a doctor, so I don't want to discourage anyone from doing what they think is right for themselves. I am just saying that there is substantial debate on the usefulness of routine screening of healthy populations.