Daily Med Bites - 07/05/2025

Dear reader, here are the summaries of some of the latest papers from PubMed.

Prostate Cancer:

• Source: PSMA PET/CT is a superior diagnostic tool for prostate cancer, offering high specificity and accuracy in detecting advanced disease stages, optimizing biopsy strategies, and influencing treatment decisions, despite challenges with PSMA-negative tumors and micrometastasis detection.

• Source: Extended-range PSMA-PET/CT is essential for comprehensive evaluation in prostate cancer to detect peripheral skeletal metastases, which can be missed by protocols limited to the trunk.

• Source: Adding PSMA and GRPR PET to mpMRI improves preoperative assessment for focal therapy in prostate cancer, providing better identification of appropriate candidates and more accurate characterization of tumor multifocality compared to biopsy-based methods.

• Source: This paper suggests that a visual whole-body tumor-burden classification using PSMA PET/CT can help in selectively stratifying patients and predicting outcomes for hormone therapy in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.

• Source: Current PCa risk calculators and biomarkers can improve diagnosis of clinically significant PCa and reduce unnecessary MRI scans and biopsies. PSMA PET has potential to enhance sensitivity and specificity for PCa, complementing MRI and refining biopsy strategies.

• Source: The American Cancer Society guideline for PSA testing aligns most closely with recent research, minimizing over- or underscreening and effectively capturing clinically significant prostate cancer.

• Source: The paper's main contribution is identifying new microRNA (miRNA) panels that can improve the accuracy of prostate cancer detection, reducing both false-positive and false-negative rates associated with PSA testing.

• Source: Using MRI-ultrasound fusion targeted biopsy along with systematic biopsy significantly increases the detection rate of clinically significant prostate cancer while also identifying a notable incidence of isolated high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia.

• Source: This paper highlights the need for developing a new imaging technique to enable early and accurate diagnosis of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) due to the limitations of current PSA testing.

• Source: PSMA-guided PROTACs specifically target and degrade AR and BET proteins in prostate cancer tissues, reducing systemic toxicity.

• Source: Digital rectal examination remains valuable in Korea's prostate cancer diagnostic approach due to its cost-effectiveness and accessibility, despite advancements in modern diagnostic tools like PSA testing, PHI, MRI, and PSMA-PET.

• Source: Multiparametric MRI improves detection and characterization of prostate cancer, leading to its inclusion in Medicare coverage for PCa diagnosis and surveillance in Australia in 2018.

• Source: HKR1 is a promising biomarker in prostate cancer, associated with poor prognosis and specific immunological characteristics, potentially guiding personalized therapy approaches.

• Source: A higher percentage of free to total prostate-specific antigen (%fPSA) may predict worse outcomes in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), suggesting %fPSA could be a prognostic biomarker.

• Source: MRI-TB detects clinically significant prostate cancer at higher rates than TRUSBx in biopsy-naïve men while having similar or lower complication rates.

• Source: Receptor-targeted, pH-sensitive NEMO particles improve MRI accuracy by reducing misdiagnosis of benign tumors as malignant.

• Source: Treatment for advanced prostate cancer is moving towards personalized approaches using biomarker-based therapies, with PARP inhibitors and targeted AR pathway strategies showing promise, especially in HRR-mutated CRPC patients. Combination therapy with PARPi and ARPI is recommended for those who can tolerate it, while monotherapy PARPi benefits patients with BRCA mutations unable to handle combinations. New AR-directed therapies are also promising for metastatic CRPC.

• Source: A comprehensive clinical quality assurance system for radiation oncology was developed and evaluated using prostate cancer definitive radiation therapy, demonstrating improved treatment accuracy and reliability.

• Source: Automatic assessment of T2-weighted image quality in prostate MRI on a patient-specific basis without radiologist oversight is feasible and valuable.
  

Cardiovascular Diseases:

• Source: Short-term exposure to ambient air pollutants is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease hospitalizations.

• Source: Long-term exposure to air pollution increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

• Source: A healthy lifestyle can mitigate the increased risk of cardiovascular disease associated with exposure to air pollution.

• Source: Long-term exposure to ozone increases the risk of incidence and progression of hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease in Asian populations.

• Source: This paper highlights the need for individual-level data to better understand the associations between air pollutants and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (CACD) and their subtypes, as well as the interactions among these factors and potential mechanisms.

• Source: Long-term PM2.5 exposure increases coronary artery disease risk primarily through elevated cardiometabolic risk factors, with individuals genetically predisposed to these risks being more susceptible.

• Source: The study finds a significant association between short-term exposure to ultrafine particles (UFP) and an increased risk of asthma hospital admissions in children, highlighting the potential health risks posed by UFP despite current lack of regulation.

That’s enough for today, see you tomorrow!

As always, these extremely reduced summaries may be incomplete or inexact in some aspects. Make sure to always read the papers of interest.

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