Transgender women on hormone therapy tend to skew artificially low on prostate cancer screening tests, which may give false reassurance and delay diagnosis and treatment, reports a new study led by UC San Francisco.
The researchers found that transwomen scored 50 times lower than typical PSA tests (prostate-specific antigen), the gold standard tool to detect prostate cancer. This could mean that current “normal” thresholds are too high for transgender women, and their cancer might not be found until a later stage, the investigators said.
The study appears June 26 in JAMA.
Transgender women keep their prostates following gender-affirming surgery which puts them at risk for prostate cancer. Often, they are on estrogen, the most common gender-affirming hormone. But patients taking estrogen are more likely to show up in their doctor’s offices with high-grade prostate cancer.