A brief review of ultrasensitive prostate-specific antigen assays for the evaluation of patients after radical prostatectomy

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Abstract
Summary The development of immunoassays for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and their clinical utility are summarized. Because of the complexity of the PSA molecule and anti-PSA antibodies, there is currently no standard in PSA measurement [1, 2]. Evaluating various immunoassays requires the knowledge of the lower limit of detection as well as the biological and clinical thresholds of a given assay [1]. There have been recent reports demonstrating earlier detection of residual prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy by ultrasensitive assays for PSA [3, 4]. Because of the recent evidence for non-prostatic sources of PSA such as the male urethra [5–7], the possibility of their contaminating PSA levels must be evaluated when more sensitive assays for PSA are under consideration.