Publications by authors named "Julia Carrasco-Valiente"

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer among men worldwide. The main screening tool remains the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), which shows significant limitations, including poor sensitivity/specificity. Therefore, establishing accurate non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers remains an unmet clinical need in PCa.

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Introduction: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among men. A major clinical need is to accurately predict clinically significant PCa (csPCa). A proteomics-based 19-biomarker model (19-BM) was previously developed using capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) and validated in close to 1,000 patients at risk for PCa.

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Despite novel therapeutic strategies, advanced-stage prostate cancer (PCa) remains highly lethal, pointing out the urgent need for effective therapeutic strategies. While dysregulation of the splicing process is considered a cancer hallmark, the role of certain splicing factors remains unknown in PCa. This study focuses on characterizing the levels and role of SRSF6 in this disease.

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(1) Background: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men. Wide application of prostate specific antigen test has historically led to over-treatment, starting from excessive biopsies. Risk calculators based on molecular and clinical variables can be of value to determine the risk of PCa and as such, reduce unnecessary and invasive biopsies.

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PSA is the most widely used diagnosticand prognostic biomarker in prostate cancer (PCa).However, its lack of specificity has generated the needto search for new complementary markers. In thisscenario, blood plasma constitutes one of the sourcesof search for new markers, which have been tried tobe combined with PSA and other clinical variables inorder to develop tests that increase their diagnosticspecificity.

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Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the gold-standard marker to screen prostate cancer (PCa) nowadays. Unfortunately, its lack of specificity and sensitivity makes the identification of novel tools to diagnose PCa an urgent medical need. In this context, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as potential sources of non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers in several pathologies.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to evaluate the added value of standard biopsy alongside targeted biopsy for cases with suspicious mp-MRI results, particularly analyzing when to skip biopsying PI-RADS 3 lesions.
  • - Data from 483 biopsies revealed that while standard biopsy improved detection rates of clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) in specific groups, it was less effective for PI-RADS-5 lesions and in patients with a prior negative biopsy.
  • - Conclusions indicate that standard biopsy can likely be avoided for patients with anterior lesions and PI-RADS-5 lesions, while targeted biopsy for PI-RADS-3 lesions is more effective in specific patient categories, particularly biopsy-naïve individuals.
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  • * Researchers investigated the relationship between urine In1-ghrelin levels and various metabolic factors (like obesity and diabetes) to determine its clinical relevance in assessing PCa risk among patients with ambiguous PSA results.
  • * The findings show that In1-ghrelin levels are significantly higher in PCa patients, correlating with increased cancer risk and aggressiveness, and enhancing the diagnostic accuracy of existing clinical models.
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Objective: To evaluate the impact of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) before confirmatory prostate biopsy in patients under active surveillance (AS).

Materials And Methods: This retrospective study included 170 patients with Gleason grade 6 prostate cancer initially enrolled in an AS program between 2011 and 2019. Prostate mpMRI was performed using a 1.

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Background: The objective of this study was to explore telomere-associated variables (TAV) as complementary biomarkers in the early diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa), analyzing their application in risk models for significant PCa (Gleason score > 6).

Methods: As part of a larger prospective longitudinal study of patients with suspicion of PCa undergoing prostate biopsy according to clinical practice, a subgroup of patients (n = 401) with PSA 3-10 ng/ml and no prior biopsies was used to evaluate the contribution of TAV to discern non-significant PCa from significant PCa. The cohort was randomly split for training (2/3) and validation (1/3) of the models.

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Introduction: Risk calculators (RCs) are easy-to-use tools considering available clinical variables that could help to select those patients with risk of prostate cancer (PCa) who should undergo a prostate biopsy.

Objective: To perform a comparison for the prediction of significant PCa (SigPCa) between the European Randomised Study of Screening for PCa (ERSPC) and the PCa Prevention Trial (PCPT) RCs in patients with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) between 3 and 10 ng/mL through an evaluation of the accuracy/variability between two consecutive PSA values.

Setting: An observational study in a major university hospital in the south of Spain.

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Engrailed variant-2 (EN2) has been suggested as a potential diagnostic biomarker; however, its presence and functional role in prostate cancer (PCa) cells is still controversial or unknown. Here, we analyzed 1) the expression/secretion profile of EN2 in five independent samples cohorts from PCa patients and controls (prostate tissues and/or urine) to determine its utility as a PCa biomarker; and 2) the functional role of EN2 in normal (RWPE1) and tumor (LNCaP/22Rv1/PC3) prostate cells to explore its potential value as therapeutic target. EN2 was overexpressed in our two cohorts of PCa tissues compared to control and in tumor cell lines compared with normal-like prostate cells.

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microRNA alterations are involved in bladder cancer tumorigenesis. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the potential role of miR-100 and miR-138 as prognostic biomarkers in Ta/T1 non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). We assessed a quantitative RT-PCR analysis of miR-100 and miR-138 in 50 bladder tumor samples (stage Ta/T1) and four healthy adjacent tissues.

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Background: Prostate cancer progresses slowly when present in low risk forms but can be lethal when it progresses to metastatic disease. A non-invasive test that can detect significant prostate cancer is needed to guide patient management.

Methods: Capillary electrophoresis/mass spectrometry has been employed to identify urinary peptides that may accurately detect significant prostate cancer.

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Recently, the influence that metabolic syndrome (MetS), hormonal alterations and inflammation might have on prostate cancer (PCa) risk has been a subject of controversial debate. Herein, we aimed to investigate the association between MetS-components, C-reactive protein (CRP) and testosterone levels, and the risk of clinically significant PCa (Sig-PCa) at the time of prostate biopsy. For that, men scheduled for transrectal ultrasound guided biopsy of the prostate were studied.

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Early detection of PCa faces severe limitations as PSA displays poor-specificity/sensitivity. As we recently demonstrated that plasma ghrelin O-acyltransferase (GOAT)-enzyme is significantly elevated in PCa-patients compared with healthy-controls, using a limited patients-cohort, we aimed to further explore the potential of GOAT to improve PCa diagnosis using an ample patients-cohort (n = 312) and defining subgroups (i.e.

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Oligometastatic prostate cancer has been proposed as an intermediate stage between localized and extensively disseminated disease. Oligometastatic disease is being diagnosed more frequently due to the advances in imaging tests. Nevertheless, there is no consensus definition yet of oligometastatic prostate cancer.

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Objective: To describe the technique of transrectal biopsy with a new device that fuses multiparametric magnetic resonance (mpMRI) and ultrasound images in real time to guide target biopsies and to evaluate our initial experience.

Methods: Patients with persistent suspicion of prostate cancer despite a previous negative biopsy and who had an mpMRI before the biopsy were selected. All patients underwent target biopsy plus standard systematic biopsy.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the ghrelin-system's role in prostate cancer (PCa), focusing on the presence and impact of the In1-ghrelin splicing variant, which is previously unexplored in the context of PCa.
  • Researchers evaluated the expression levels of In1-ghrelin and native-ghrelin in prostate tissue samples from high-risk PCa patients and healthy controls, finding that In1-ghrelin was significantly overexpressed in high-risk samples and correlated with PSA levels.
  • Experimental assays showed that In1-ghrelin treatment increased cancer cell aggressiveness, with little effect from native-ghrelin, suggesting a potential link between In1-ghrelin and PCa progression.
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sst5TMD4, a splice variant of the sst5 gene, is overexpressed and associated with aggressiveness in various endocrine-related tumors, but its presence, functional role, and mechanisms of actions in prostate cancer (PCa)-the most common cancer type in males-is completely unexplored. In this study, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded prostate pieces from patients with localized PCa, which included tumoral and nontumoral adjacent regions ( = 45), fresh biopsies from patients with high-risk PCa ( = 52), and healthy fresh prostates from cystoprostatectomies ( = 14) were examined. In addition, PCa cell lines and xenograft models were used to determine the presence and functional role of sst5TMD4.

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Background And Objective: Renal lithiasis is one of the most important urological diseases. It seems to be related to different socio-demographic and climatic factors, lifestyle and pre-existing comorbidity. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between socio-demographic variables, certain risk factors and chronic diseases and the renal lithiasis.

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Renal lithiasis is one of the most common disorders in modern society, constituting an important health problem that associates a great economic burden. The nature of stone disease varies according to age and sex, being also influenced by dietary and lifestyle factors, and climatic variations among others. In spite of the advances made in the management of this pathology, it continues being a disease with a high recurrence rate.

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Objective: To externally validate the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) risk calculator (RC) and to evaluate its variability between 2 consecutive prostate-specific antigen (PSA) values.

Materials And Methods: We prospectively catalogued 1021 consecutive patients before prostate biopsy for suspicion of prostate cancer (PCa). The risk of PCa and significant PCa (Gleason score ≥7) from 749 patients was calculated according to ERSPC-RC (digital rectal examination-based version 3 of 4) for 2 consecutive PSA tests per patient.

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Ghrelin-O-acyltransferase (GOAT) is the key enzyme regulating ghrelin activity, and has been proposed as a potential therapeutic target for obesity/diabetes and as a biomarker in some endocrine-related cancers. However, GOAT presence and putative role in prostate-cancer (PCa) is largely unknown. Here, we demonstrate, for the first time, that GOAT is overexpressed (mRNA/protein-level) in prostatic tissues (n = 52) and plasma/urine-samples (n = 85) of PCa-patients, compared with matched controls [healthy prostate tissues (n = 12) and plasma/urine-samples from BMI-matched controls (n = 28), respectively].

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Background And Objective: Urolithiasis is a common urologic condition with increasing incidence in the population worldwide. In Andalusia (Spain), the PreLiRenA study showed a high prevalence (16.4%; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 14.

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