Just had my annual physical. PSA last year at this time was 3.6. Now it is 6.9. The annual physical last year first discovered elevated wbc and immature cells that ultimately led to CML dx in June. Been on 400 mg Imatinib daily and PCR scores have been very encouraging. Anybody else had an elevated PSA following taking Imatinib? Any other wisdom?
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CML/Imatinib and Rising PSA
There was a study done quite a long time back to see the effect of imatimib on PSA - I guess in the hope that it could be used to manage prostate cancer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16796694
However, the trial didn't produce much of clinical significance. So it sounds like there was a hope that imatinib could lower PSA but that didn't really turn out to be true in this case and I don't think any link between the two has been shown.
David.
My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 14 years ago. He had surgery and radiation and is now cancer free, but has a lot of side effects from the radiation. He was 61 at the time, I'm 48 now. Doctors have said I'm at a pretty high risk for developing it myself, so I've already had a few exams seen the urologist a couple times. Last time I saw him, he had just returned from a conference and told me that psa testing is under a lot of scrutiny in his community. It's very similar to breast cancer testing... this heated question of overtreating someone based on a single, indirect, potentially misleading test. I wish I could give you more details, but I can just say that elevated psa would not necessarily indicate prostate cancer. And in some cases, even if they think you have cancer they might not treat it the same way they would have say 10-20 years ago. Seeing a urologist would at least give you insight from someone with expertise in considering these kinds of questions.