• Posted February 4, 2025

At-Home Urine Test Can Detect Aggressive Prostate Cancer

It’s tough for a man to know what to do following a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

The treatment is often worse than the risk posed by the cancer itself, causing some men to suffer incontinence and impotence even though their tumor wouldn’t have killed them.

It’s sometimes better -- but unnerving -- to simply live with the cancer and keep it under observation.

Now, a new genetics-driven urine test can help clear up that confusion by helping identify aggressive prostate cancers that are more likely to lead to a man’s early death, a new study says.

What’s more, the test sample can be taken at home and sent in for analysis, researchers say.

The test, called MyProstateScore 2.0 (MPS2), looks at 18 genes linked to aggressive prostate cancers.

The urine test detected 94% of aggressive prostate cancers, a rate more sensitive than that of PSA blood tests, researchers recently reported in The Journal of Urology.

“Its primary benefit is that the test can accurately predict your probability of developing aggressive prostate cancer, putting both the patient and physician at ease,” co-researcher Dr. Ganesh Palapattu, chair of urology at the University of Michigan, said in a news release.

The current gold-standard test for prostate cancer is the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, which looks in blood for a protein released by an inflamed prostate.

However, fewer than 25% of men with an elevated PSA have a type of prostate cancer that needs immediate treatment, according to Lynx Dx, manufacturer of the urine test.

Previous studies had shown that the MyProstateScore 2.0 test could effectively judge the severity of prostate cancer, but those results had occurred after a rectal exam, researchers said.

A rectal exam squishes the prostate, making it more likely that DNA debris from a tumor would wind up in the patient’s urine sample.

The new results show that the urine test could be taken at home and sent in, given that it will be as accurate even without a rectal exam.

In fact, Lynx Dx announced Monday following the study’s publication that they will make MyProstateScore 2.0 available for at-home collection sampling.

The urine test “now empowers patients to collect their samples in the comfort of their homes, a significant step forward in prostate cancer risk assessment and our commitment to patient-centered care,” Dr. Spencer Heaton, chief medical officer at Lynx Dx, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers ran the test using urine from 266 men who had not undergone a rectal exam.

The results also showed that using the test would have avoided up to 53% of unnecessary prostate biopsies, researchers said.

Researchers plan to study the test’s ability to judge low-risk prostate cancers in men.

The test “could potentially improve the health of our patients by avoiding overdiagnosis and overtreatment and allowing us to focus on those who are most likely to have aggressive cancers,” Palapattu said.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about prostate cancer.

SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, Jan. 28, 2025