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When combined with cystoscopy, a noninvasive and relatively inexpensive urinary proteomics test provides a 99% rate of detection of recurrent bladder cancer in patients with a history of the disease, researchers report in the Jan. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
H. Barton Grossman, M.D., of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, and colleagues compared several methods to detect bladder cancer recurrence in 668 patients with a history of the disease. The researchers used cystoscopy with biopsy as the reference and compared this to cytology of urine samples and a proteomics test for the NMP22 protein of urine samples.
Of the 103 diagnosed bladder cancers, 91.3% were diagnosed by cystoscopy alone, which increased to 99% when combined with the NMP22 test. The sensitivity of the NMP22 test was 49.5% and the specificity was 87.3%, and the researchers note that the NMP22 test detected eight of nine cancers not detected during the initial cystoscopy, including seven high-grade cancers.
"The noninvasive point-of-care assay for elevated urinary NMP22 protein can increase the ability to detect recurrent bladder cancer, with test results available during the patient visit," the authors write.
Matritech Inc. designed and approved the study, and reimbursed some costs.