At-home urine test shows high accuracy for prostate cancer screening

Researchers at Vanderbilt and the University of Michigan have shown that a simple at-home urine test for prostate cancer screening is highly accurate. The exciting new results, published in The Journal of Urology, build upon a prior Vanderbilt study of prostate cancer screening that required a digital rectal exam. 

The results are important because this could enable at-home testing and increased access to testing for patients undergoing telehealth care or living in remote areas.

Traditional prostate cancer screening with PSA testing and biopsy has been shown to lead to unnecessary procedures and overdiagnosis of low-grade cancers, according to lead author Jeffrey Tosoian, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Urology and director of Translational Cancer Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The test is highly accurate for ruling out the presence of clinically significant prostate cancers - those that merit treatment - so that patients with a negative test result can confidently avoid having to undergo MRI or biopsy.

In the current study, this non-invasive urine test would have allowed patients with an elevated PSA to avoid 34-53% of unnecessary biopsies."

Jeffrey Tosoian, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Urology and director of Translational Cancer Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

MyProstateScore 2.0 (MPS2) urine test is a non-invasive test used to help identify high-grade prostate cancers that need early detection and treatment by analyzing 18 genes associated with prostate cancer.

In a 2024 study, Tosoian and colleagues developed and validated the test in urine collected after a digital rectal exam, but the new study re-validated the test in urine obtained without the exam and the accuracy was very similar.

The test is used to rule out the presence of clinically significant prostate cancer, meaning those that merit treatment, with high accuracy in men being evaluated for prostate cancer due to elevated serum PSA (PSA >3 ng/ml).

"Rectal exams are no fun," Tosoian said. "These findings will increase the impact of the test, as it can now be used for at-home testing."

Tosoian said next steps will be to demonstrate the use of MPS2 in patients undergoing active surveillance for low-grade prostate cancer. If proven to be similarly accurate in this setting, use of MPS2 could eliminate or reduce the need for prostate biopsies during active surveillance, enabling reliable non-invasive monitoring of low-grade cancers.