Clinical evaluation on serum osteocalcin in advanced prostate cancer patients

: The clinical significance of osteocalcin as a marker for advanced prostate cancer was examined. Osteocalcin is produced by osteoblasts and is also detected in the blood. Its change is a good index of osteometabolic diseases and especially of the osteoblastic activity. In the present study, we examined the serum osteocalcin concentration of those patients with urogenital tumor, especially prostate cancer, who had been confirmed for multiple bone-metastasis by clinical examination. These patients comprised an untreated group (15 cases) of patients with prostate cancer presenting confirmed bone-metastasis, and a group of patients without bone-metastasis. The respective serum osteocalcin concentrations of these two groups were compared with 51 cases of prostate hypertrophy used as the control group. The findings revealed that the serum osteocalcin concentration demonstrated high values in the first group with a tendency toward lowering during treatment. Neither the latter group nor the control group showed high values. On the other hand, false-positive cases (8%), and false-negative cases (20%) were found. In the case of bone-metastasis, these results suggest that measurement of serum osteocalcin concentration is useful for clinical periodical observation about the activity of the bone metastatic focus.