After treatment for metastatic prostate cancer, a drop in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels in the blood is an indicator that the treatment is working. A recent real-world study indicates that reaching a PSA level below 0.2 ng\/mL is an indicator of improved patient survival. The study is published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.<\/p>\n
Multiple phase 3 clinical trials have shown that a PSA level below 0.2 ng\/mL is the best cut-off for determining a patient’s prognosis. Real-world data are lacking, however, and physicians often use other metrics, such as percentage of PSA decline, to assess treatment response. To determine whether there is a PSA response target associated with the most favorable outcome in community-dwelling adults with metastatic prostate cancer, investigators analyzed Veterans Health Administration data on 4,890 patients who received testosterone deprivation therapy with or without other treatments in 2018\u20132023 for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.<\/p>\n
Over a median follow-up of approximately 2 years, 896 patients died. Patients whose PSA levels dropped below 0.2 ng\/mL within 9 months of starting treatment were 54% less likely to die than patients whose levels did not drop this low, whether their PSA levels also decreased by at least 90% or not. Patients who had at least a 90% PSA decline but did not achieve a PSA of less than 0.2 ng\/ml had no improvement in survival. The findings suggest that patients who do not experience a PSA drop below 0.2 ng\/mL could be candidates for more aggressive treatments. Also, patients who received testosterone deprivation therapy plus another drug to further block testosterone were more likely to reach a PSA below 0.2 ng\/mL.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
These data show that we need to target a PSA below 0.2 ng\/ml as our metric of success to optimize outcomes for our patients with metastatic prostate cancer.”<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Stephen J. Freedland, MD, corresponding author, professor of Urology at Cedars-Sinai and Staff Physician at the Durham VA Medical Center<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Freedland, S. J., et al. (2026). How low do you need to go? Association between various prostate\u2010specific antigen response measures and clinical outcomes in metastatic castration\u2010sensitive prostate cancer in the Veterans Health Administration data. Cancer.\u00a0DOI: 10.1002\/cncr.70494.\u00a0https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/cncr.70494<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After treatment for metastatic prostate cancer, a drop in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels in the blood is an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13216,4250,2534,134,111,139,69,29138,12239,85143,22812,3422],"class_list":["post-564785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-antigen","tag-blood","tag-cancer","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prostate","tag-prostate-cancer","tag-prostate-specific-antigen","tag-testosterone","tag-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}