Prostate specific antigen as a biomarker for breast cancer: a meta-analysis study.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether prostate-specific antigen (PSA) could serve as a biomarker for breast cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed an electronic search on Medline, PubMed, SPRINGER, John Wiley, Science Direct, EBSCO, CNKI and Wanfang Data to identify relevant studies for our meta-analysis. The search terms included ['prostate specific antigen' or 'PSA' (MESH)] and ['breast cancer' or 'breast carcinoma' (MESH)].

RESULTS: A comprehensive meta-analysis of 10 studies comprising of 770 cases and 799 controls were included. Among the studies considered, the sensitivity of the tPSA test for diagnosis was 0.718 (95% CI: 0.630, 0.792), the specificity was 0.528 (95% CI: 0.299, 0.746) and the diagnostic odds ratios (DOR) was 2.852 (95% CI: 1.021, 7.969). The sensitivity of fPSA test for diagnosis was 0.783 (95% CI: 0.541, 0.917), specificity was 0.679 (95% CI: 0.209, 0.944) and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) was 7.668 (95% CI: 0.331, 177.451).

CONCLUSIONS: Serum PSA could be a useful biomarker for the diagnosis of breast cancer, and a biomarker for the differential diagnosis of breast cancer from benign breast tumors.