PSA test drives diagnosis within families

The brothers of men with prostate cancer face a higher disease risk because of increased diagnostic activity, and not necessarily because they carry a genetic mutation that increases risk of the disease, according to a Swedish study.

Ola Bratt, MD, and colleagues at Helsingborg Hospital looked at data from the Prostate Cancer Database Sweden and included 22,511 brothers of 13,975 index patients in their analysis.

They found that the incidence of prostate cancer was higher among brothers of prostate cancer patients. Early-stage prostate cancer, found with PSA testing, cropped up most often, according to the study results (J Natl Cancer Inst online, August 19, 2010).