Yasmina Kattou / Credits photo : PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP
06h13, 05 November 2024
It’s the start of “Movember”, male cancer awareness month. The opportunity to talk about this innovation from the Institut Curie: a urine test to detect prostate cancer. Every year, nearly 60,000 new cases are discovered. The non-invasive urine test could help speed up the diagnosis which currently requires several steps.
The month of November marks the start of “Movember”, male cancer awareness month. Today, prostate cancer screening is based on three examinations: a blood test, followed by palpation of the prostate. The results of these tests may prompt a biopsy. Except that among the 130,000 punctures carried out each year, more than 40,000 ultimately do not reveal cancer. The urine test would therefore make it possible to avoid biopsies, which are not without consequences, says Antoine Morillon, research director at the Institut Curie.
“Doing a prostate biopsy today involves sending around fifteen small needles into the prostate. So, we understand quite easily, given its positioning, that it is an organ that can become infected. bleeding and healing which is difficult It’s antibiotic treatments,” explains the expert.
Cheaper screening
The urine test has the advantage of being inexpensive and non-invasive. The objective is to look for fragments released by the tumor in the urine in order to analyze them. The results are known in just a few days, compared to several weeks for a biopsy. Patients could benefit from this test in the coming years.
Canada
