Emerging roles of vaspin and myonectin as novel biomarkers in prostate cancer diagnosis and staging vaspin and myonectin as novel biomarkers for prostate cancer.

[AIM] The second most frequent kind of cancer in males is prostate cancer (CaP), with high mortality and morbidity rates due to false negatives and positives in biochemical tests used in early diagnosis. This study investigated whether serum vaspin and myonectin levels can serve as potential biomarkers for CaP diagnosis and staging.

[METHOD] A total of 213 men, 50 healthy controls, 72 BPH patients, and 91 CaP patients, who applied to the Urology clinic and volunteered to participate in the study, were included. Of the 91 CaP patients, 51 had local, 20 locally advanced, and 20 metastatic CaP.

[RESULTS] Serum vaspin and myonectin values were higher in CaP than in BPH and control groups. Compared to patients with local and locally advanced CaP, those with metastatic CaP had considerably greater vaspin levels. For distinguishing CaP from controls, vaspin demonstrated an AUC of 0.772 (sensitivity 68%, specificity 78%). Importantly, for discriminating metastatic CaP from nonmetastatic disease, vaspin achieved an AUC of 0.90 (sensitivity 85%, specificity 82%).

[CONCLUSION] The findings of this study demonstrate that serum vaspin exhibited superior diagnostic performance compared to prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in distinguishing CaP cases from controls (AUC = 0.772). Moreover, vaspin concentrations increased progressively with advancing disease stages, achieving an AUC of 0.90 for discriminating metastatic disease, highlighting its potential utility not only in diagnosis but also in non-invasive staging. The diagnostic performance of myonectin appeared favorable compared to PSA; however, as it showed no association with disease staging, this finding should be interpreted with caution.