Researchers at the University of Michigan are experimenting with a urine test to help distinguish between benign and aggressive forms of prostate cancer. This apparent early diagnosis will help males pursue the necessary action such as a surgery or radiation treatment.

A compound called sarcosine may distinguish slow-growing prostate cancers from those likely to spread and become lethal, the new study shows. In an unexpected finding, benign prostate cells take on cancerous characteristics in lab dishes when exposed to sarcosine, suggesting that the compound is less of a bystander and more of a perpetrator in the malignancy, researchers report in the February 12 Nature.

Testing for a group of small molecules produced by the body to the aggressive form of the disease, should enable doctors to determine whether a patient has an aggressive form of prostate cancer and requires urgent action. In contrast, patients with benign prostate cancer often end up dying of other conditions because their tumors are so slow to develop.

"There are metabolites that might be useful in predicting aggressiveness of prostate cancer," said lead researcher Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan, director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology and a professor of pathology and urology. (…) Metabolites, similar to genes and proteins, should also be measured in understanding cancer," he said.

However, before a urine test involving metabolites could become standard medical practice, it would have to be tested in animals and then in people through clinical trials, Chinnaiyan said.

Sarcosine was picked from the 10 as the most promising marker because its levels were raised in localised disease and dramatically increased in spreading cancer.