Abstract
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) has become the most commonly used tumour marker for prostate cancer. Studies have suggested that age specific cutoff values for PSA screening are better than the currently used standard cutoff of 4.0ng/ml and different races have their own reference ranges. The objective of this study was to measure the PSA values of elderly individuals attending a tertiary care centre in southern India and postulate the possible normal values of PSA in different age groups of elderly. A total of 1038 males over the age of 60 years presenting to the Elderly Comprehensive Health clinic at the Department of Geriatrics of a tertiary hospital in Southern India between March 2009 and February 2011were studied. 4ml blood was collected and PSA was estimated by Chemiluminiscent Micro-particle Immunoassay. PSA values were analyzed in terms of mean, standard deviation and 5th and 95th percentiles. Results showed that 5th and 95th percentile values were 0.27 and 3.82 among those who were 60-69 years, 0.28 and 3.43 among those who were 70-79 years and 0.26 and 3.95 among those who were more than 80 years. 10 % of the elderly population in all age subsets had PSA values over the normal. This study showed that the PSA values from South India are similar to the expected. The age specific Indians being ethnically distinct, need to have separate PSA reference ranges which need to be established with large community-based multicentre Indian studies.
