Recently, interest in the identification of non-invasive markers for prostate
carcinoma detectable in the urine of patients has increased. In this study, we monitored the abundance of potential non-invasive markers of prostate
carcinoma such as
amino acid sarcosine, involved in the metabolism of
amino acids and methylation processes, ongoing during the progression of prostate
carcinoma. in addition, other potential prostate
tumor markers were studied. The most significant markers,
prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and free PSA (fPSA), already used in clinical diagnosis, were analyzed using an immunoenzymometric assay. Whole
amino acid profiles were also determined to evaluate the status of
amino acids in patient urine samples and to elucidate the possibility of their utilization for prostate
carcinoma diagnosis. To obtain the maximum amount of information, the biochemical parameters were determined using various spectrophotometric methods. All results were subjected to statistical processing for revealing different correlations between the studied parameters. We observed alterations in most of the analyzed substances. Based on the results obtained, we concluded that the specificity of prostate
carcinoma diagnosis could be improved by determination of common urine metabolites, since we compiled a set of tests, including the analysis of
sarcosine,
proline, PSA and
uric acid in the urine. These metabolites were not observed in the urine obtained from healthy subjects, while their levels were elevated in all patients suffering from prostate
carcinoma.