A group of scientists from King George’s Medical University, Centre of Biomedical Research, Lucknow University, and Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow have evaluated the usefulness of Macrophage Inhibitory Cytokine-1 (MIC-1) protein in the diagnosis of prostate cancer.

The team has identified a sensitive and specific diagnostic marker for prostate cancer that may differentiate between cancerous and non-cancerous prostate enlargement.

The commonly used diagnostic test is to check the level of Prostate-Specific Antigen or PSA, in serum. Though it is a reliable marker, it is not confined to prostate cancer only. PSA levels increase in benign prostatic hyperplasia also, which is a non-cancerous increase in the size of the prostate gland.

Although further validation needs to be done on larger datasets, scientists believe MIC-1 could be a potential marker that might be routinely used in the laboratory for prostate cancer diagnosis with or without PSA. With further analyses, MIC-1 screening might be clinically useful in distinguishing between grades of prostate cancer too.