Objectives: To determine whether there is a correlation between high Gleason score and free/total (f/t) prostate specific antigen (PSA) in patients newly diagnosed with prostate carcinoma.
Materials and methods: The study included 272 prostate biopsy patients whose total PSA value ranged from 4-10 ng/ml. The patients were divided into 2 groups according to the f/t PSA ratio: Group 1 ≤ 15% and Group 2 > 15%. Furthermore, the groups were also compared to each other in terms of mild (≤ 6), moderate (= 7), and high (≥ 8) Gleason score.
Results: Group 1 consisted of 135 (49.6%) patients and Group 2 consisted of 137 (50.4%) patients. While 27 (20%) patients had a high Gleason score in Group 1, only 10 (7.3%) patients had a high Gleason score in Group 2 (p = 0.008). Using Spearman's correlation test, we found that the f/t PSA ratios were observed to decrease significantly in all patients with increased Gleason scores (p = 0.002, r = -0.185).
Conclusion: According to our study, there is a relationship between higher Gleason score and decreased f/t PSA ratio. Therefore, f/t PSA can be an indicator for predicting the Gleason score.
Keywords: Gleason score; PSA; Percent free PSA prostate cancer; Prostate biopsy.