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 PSA4 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

PSA4 ng/mL as the threshold of prostate cancer detection

has high sensitivity

but low specificity. Prostate cancer screening could be based on PSA4 ng/mL.