Bocxman,
I agree, there is an inverse relationship between sensitivity and specificity for any screening test. And if the cutoff value of RECAF Units is raised, the sensitivity (the detection of existing cancers) decreases. But with prostate cancer diagnosis, BioCurex indicates the focus should be on what is contained in the following sentence that is found in last Wednesday’s press release:
“The main problem in prostate cancer diagnosis is not to discriminate patients with cancer from normal individuals, but rather to discriminate between prostate cancer and benign prostate conditions.”
It seems obvious from the above sentence that one of the primary goals in prostate cancer diagnosis is to avoid false positives and the resulting unnecessary biopsies.
With that in mind, it would appear that the cutoff value of RECAF Units would need to be set higher to give a high specificity (like 97%) and lower sensitivity (like 68%) as the data showed in the May 16, 2006 press release for cancer patients verses patients with benign prostate conditions. So why even publish data such as the cancer vs. benign prostate hyperplasia results with 90% sensitivity and 84% specificity, that was in last week's press release, if the real goal of a prostate screening test is to reduce the number of false positives to a minimum? kag
