The CancerWeb Report, What's New In Cancer: August, 1996
Prostate Cancer

• What are the normal ranges for PSA in black men? - Prostate cancer is more common and typically more advanced when diagnosed in black men. PSA values may help in earlier diagnosis, but what are the normal values to be used as a reference against which to make decisions? Researchers from a number of US medical centers, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Mayo Clinic, pooled their information to come up with normal ranges, which if exceeded are usually indicative of prostate cancer; they published the results in the August 1, 1996 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The best diagnostic results were obtained by keeping 95% sensitivity for the test rather than 95% specificity, which latter would lose 41% of black men with the cancer. The ranges in nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) were: 0-2.0 for men in their 40s; 0-4.0 for men in their 50s; 0-4.5 for men in their 60s; and 0-5.5 for men in their 70s. Black men typically had higher average values than whites, both for control normal values (1.48 versus 1.33) and when they had prostate cancer (7.46 versus 6.28). (Morgan, NEJ Med 335:304, 1996)