The paper, entitled "Genetic correction of PSA values using sequence variants associated with PSA levels," is published today online in Science Translational Medicine and will appear in an upcoming print edition of the journal. The study was conducted in several stages and involved tens of thousands of men with and without prostate cancer. First, more than 300,000 SNPs were analyzed in 16,000 Icelandic men with PSA measurements but who had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer. SNPs that correlated with PSA levels were identified and then validated in a cohort from the UK. These SNPs were then studied in large case-control cohorts from Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain, Romania and the US to establish the association with PSA levels independent of risk of prostate cancer itself. The authors then demonstrated how measuring four SNPs correlated with PSA levels can be used to obtain a personalized threshold for when to biopsy, and that using such thresholds improves the ratio of positive to negative biopsies. The greatest improvement in prediction accuracy was seen when men were tested both for the PSA correction SNPs as well as a panel of prostate cancer risk SNPs detected by the deCODE ProstateCancer(TM) test.

SOURCE DeCODE Genetics Inc