Anti-Müllerian Hormone: a novel biomarker for aggressive prostate cancer? Emerging evidence from a prospective study of radical prostatectomies

Abstract

Abstract PURPOSE Prostate cancer patients are a heterogeneous group concerning the aggressiveness of the disease. The relationship of steroid hormones with the aggressiveness of prostate cancer is unclear. It is known that the Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH), inhibits prostate cancer cell lines in vitro. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship of AMH and steroid hormones with the aggressiveness of prostate cancer.METHODS This was a prospective study of consecutive radical prostatectomy patients. We measured the following hormones: total testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin, albumin, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, estradiol, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, androstenedione and AMH. The minimum follow-up after radical prostatectomy was 5 years. For the aggressiveness of prostate cancer, we considered the following 3 variables: post-operative Gleason Score (GS) ≥ 8, TNM pΤ3 disease and PSA biochemical recurrence (BCR).RESULTS In total, 91 patients were enrolled. The mean age and PSA was 64.8 years and 9.3 ng/dl, respectively. The median post-operative GS was 7. Low AMH blood levels were correlated with higher post-operative GS (p = 0.001), as well as with PSA BCR (p = 0.043). With pT3 disease, only albumin was (negatively) correlated (p = 0.008). ROC analysis showed that AMH is a good predictor of BCR (AUC 0.646, 95% CI 0.510–0.782, p = 0.043); a cut-off value of 3.06 ng/dl had a positive prognostic value of 71.4% and negative prognostic value of 63.3% for BCR. Cox regression analysis showed that AMH is a statistically significant and independent prognostic marker for BCR (p = 0.013). More precisely, for every 1 ng/ml of AMH rise, the probability for PSA BCR decreases by 20.8% (HR = 0.792). Moreover, in Kaplan-Meier analysis, disease-free survival is more probable in patients with AMΗ ≥ 3.06 ng/ml (p = 0.004).CONCLUSIONS Low AMH blood levels were correlated with aggressive prostate cancer in this radical prostatectomy cohort of patients. Therefore, AMH could be a prognostic biomarker for the aggressiveness of the disease.