On 4/13/2008 foxcharlie wrote:
45 year old. No family history. 3 DRE's ,normal but a little assemetrical prostate. Elevated PSA level 7, up from 3.8 3 years ago. Should I have the biopsy? Does ejaculation cause PSA to go up? 2 Urologist told me it doesn't . What's the odds of this being Prostate Cancer?
I would not cling to the hope that a suspicious PSA rise could be due to ejaculation, bicycle riding or DRE. Some think these things could influence it, but that's not been proven, which is why most doctors often do not mention it.
Various things can cause elevated PSA readings, including infection, inflamation and enlarged prostate: the prostate naturally produces PSA, and the larger it is the more PSA is produced, so size of the prostate needs to be factored in for a PSA reading to be meaningful.
Sometimes there are elevated readings for no known reason. No one knows what the odds are, but a majority of elevated PSAs in the gray area between 4 and 10 usually relate to benign causes.
You could have a "free PSA" test, which will indicate the % of PSA from normal causes, and the probability of PC, after which you could decide about a biopsy.