Browsing by Subject "testosterone"

Metastatic prostate cancer is often fatal disease stage. Mechanism causing prostate cancer remains unknown, but possible mechanism relies on hormones. Testosterone may activate spontaneous cell division of oncogenes. Prostate cancer cells require androgen cell stimulation of AR to grow in early stages of prostate cancer, approximately 80-90% of prostate cancer cases are androgen dependent. 3bHSD1, encoded by HSD3B1, catalyzes the conversion of dehydroepiandrosterone to androstenedione and further to T and DHT. SNP (1245A to C) in HSD3B1 changes asparagine to threonine in position 367 resulting the enzyme accumulation and increased function. With androgen deprivation therapy castrate levels of testosterone are often achieved and it induces positive response in most PCa patients, but the polymorphism of 1245C is related with lower survival rate and higher probability for PCa to develop into CRPC. The aim of this study was to find out the effect of SNP in 3bHSD1 to androgen levels in patients treated with ADT. 32 patients were first genotyped based on SNP in the HSD3B1 gene (rs1047303) with 96.9 % success rate. 21 patients represented genotype AA, 9 AC and 1 patient CC. Other mutation in rs6203 was also detected. Genotyping was done by isolating DNA from blood samples and preparing it further for Sanger sequencing. Steroid analysis was performed by using LC/MS, using liquid-liquid extraction as sample preparation method. Altogether 21 steroids were analyzed from serum samples. Samples were taken every 3 months, during 33 months period for longest. The concentrations of T and DHT were reduced in AA genotype group after ADT as was expected to happen in all of the groups. In fact, the only significant changes were seen in AA genotype with for example the concentrations of previously mentioned T, DHEA and also A4. The changes in measured androgen levels cannot be generalized to concern especially the CC genotype, as there was only one patient homozygote with the mutation. Even though these results gave promising data of possible androgen synthesis pathways, a similar study must be rerun with larger patient data to be sure of the characteristics of different genotypes. Also, the effect of SNP in rs6203 remains still unknown.