Abstract: Background and purpose: Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is a tumor marker for prostate cancer screening and detection. However, there is still some debate over whether it is appropriate to use PSA>4 ng/mL as a screening standard. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the value of PSA in the early detection of prostate cancer in Chinese, and to provide basis for the development of prostate cancer screening strategy. Methods: By searching the literature stored in Wanfang database, China Hospital Knowledge Database (CHKD) and PubMed database, and tracing the literature, we collected the relevant literature about PSA in the early diagnosis of prostate cancer in Chinese population from Jan. 2000 to Mar. 2002. According to the established inclusion criteria, the literature was screened, and the quality of the literature was evaluated. The sensitivity and specificity of PSA >4 ng/mL as the critical point for the detection of prostate cancer were analyzed by Meta-analysis. Results: A total of 5 722 articles were retrieved, and 9 articles were included after 5713 articles were excluded. The total number of subjects was 6 425, including 596 cases of prostate cancer. The results of meta-analysis showed that the sensitivity, specificity and area under curve (AUC) of summary receiver operating characteristics (SROC) curves of PSA were 91% (95% CI: 89%-93%), 41% (95% CI: 27%-56%) and 0.91 (95% CI: 0.88-0.93), respectively. Conclusion: In Chinese population, PSA>4 ng/mL as the threshold of prostate cancer detection, has high sensitivity, but low specificity. Prostate cancer screening could be based on PSA>4 ng/mL.

Key words: Prostate cancer, Prostate-specific antigen, Detection, Meta-analysis