Urine test for prostate diagnosis

A URINE test can help doctors better spot prostate cancer than either the current blood test or a rectal exam alone, US researchers reported recently.

They said Gen-Probe’s Progensa PCA3 test caught about half the actual cases of prostate cancer in men who had abnormal PSA levels or digital rectal exams, and had about a 20% “false positive” rate.

“That’s pretty good, actually,” said Dr David Crawford of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who helped lead the study.

Trying to diagnose prostate cancer is one of the most maddening tasks a doctor has to do.

The prostate is a walnut-shaped gland that produces semen. Digital rectal exams can tell a specialist that it is getting bigger, but that happens with normal ageing as well.

A blood test for prostate specific antigen or PSA shows when PSA rises, but PSA goes up with either cancer or just normal enlargement of the prostate – or even if the gland is inflamed, such as from an infection.

Biopsies are difficult and painful to do and may take a portion of healthy prostate, missing any tumours entirely. And prostate tumours can grow slowly.

A study last year estimated that more than one million men in the US alone had been needlessly treated for prostate tumours that likely would never have killed them.

The Progensa test looks for a genetic material called PCA3. It is a string of RNA that does not appear to have any function but that is overexpressed, or overactive, in prostate cancer.

Lightly touching the prostate can cause its release and it can then be detected in the urine using the test.

Crawford and colleagues tested Progensa in about 1,900 men who had high PSA readings, an abnormal digital rectal exam or both and who were scheduled to have biopsies.

“It reflects on the aggressiveness of the cancer,” Crawford said. “If you had no cancer, your PCA3 was at 25 or 20. If you had precursors such as high grade PIN (prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia), your score was about 38 to 40 and men who had cancer scored about 50 to 55.”
The test indicated that 78% of the men had cancer and actually did. This compares to just 21% for PSA alone, the researchers told a meeting of the American Urological Association in San Francisco.

“If the PCA3 is abnormal, above about 35, you have got an 80% chance of having cancer,” Crawford said. – Reuters

Modern Wheat A "Perfect, Chronic Poison," Doctor Says

Modern wheat is a "perfect, chronic poison," according to Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist who has published a book all about the world's most popular grain.

Davis said that the wheat we eat these days isn't the wheat your grandma had: "It's an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in the '60s and '70s," he said on "CBS This Morning." "This thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in this thing called gliadin. It's not gluten. I'm not addressing people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. I'm talking about everybody else because everybody else is susceptible to the gliadin protein that is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year."

Asked if the farming industry could change back to the grain it formerly produced, Davis said it could, but it would not be economically feasible because it yields less per acre. However, Davis said a movement has begun with people turning away from wheat - and dropping substantial weight.

"If three people lost eight pounds, big deal," he said. "But we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people losing 30, 80, 150 pounds. Diabetics become no longer diabetic; people with arthritis having dramatic relief. People losing leg swelling, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and on and on every day."

To avoid these wheat-oriented products, Davis suggests eating "real food," such as avocados, olives, olive oil, meats, and vegetables. "(It's) the stuff that is least likely to have been changed by agribusiness," he said. "Certainly not grains. When I say grains, of course, over 90 percent of all grains we eat will be wheat, it's not barley... or flax. It's going to be wheat.

"It's really a wheat issue."

Some health resources, such as the Mayo Clinic, advocate a more balanced diet that does include wheat. But Davis said on "CTM" they're just offering a poor alternative.

"All that literature says is to replace something bad, white enriched products with something less bad, whole grains, and there's an apparent health benefit - 'Let's eat a whole bunch of less bad things.' So I take...unfiltered cigarettes and replace with Salem filtered cigarettes, you should smoke the Salems. That's the logic of nutrition, it's a deeply flawed logic. What if I take it to the next level, and we say, 'Let's eliminate all grains,' what happens then?

"That's when you see, not improvements in health, that's when you see transformations in health."

Source: CBS News