Pretreatment total testosterone levels in patients with prostate cancer in the past two decades in Japan.
BACKGROUND
Many studies have shown the relationship between pretreatment serum testosterone levels and the clinical stage or histological grade, but the clinical significance of pretreatment testosterone levels is controversial. We studied the association of pretreatment total testosterone levels with the clinical stage and histological grade of prostate cancer.


METHODS
We evaluated 2914 patients whose pretreatment testosterone levels were recorded from 1982 to 2002. Serum testosterone levels were measured by radioimmunoassay.


RESULTS
There was a trend toward decreasing testosterone values with worsening clinical staging. There was a trend toward decreasing testosterone values with worsening histological grading, too. Patients with poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma had significantly lower testosterone levels than those with the others (versus well; p<0.01, moderately; p<0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Newly diagnosed patients with poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma of prostate have lower testosterone levels than the others.
Sekine
Yoshitaka
Y
Department of Urology, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, 3-39-22 Showa-machi, Maebashi, Gunma-pref 371-8511, Japan.
Ito
Kazuto
K
Yamamoto
Takumi
T
Nakazato
Haruki
H
Shibata
Yasuhiro
Y
Hatori
Motoaki
M
Suzuki
Kazuhiro
K
D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000097:blood* / Q000628:therapy; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000628:therapy; D011863:Radioimmunoassay; D013739:Testosterone / Q000097:blood*
D013739:Testosterone