PSA decrease after levofloxacin therapy in patients with histological prostatitis.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of levofloxacin (LVX) oral therapy on total serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) values in patients with histological prostatitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All consecutive outpatients with histological evidence of chronic prostatitis, total PSA > 4 ng/ml, normal DRE and urinalysis and treated once daily with LVX 500 mg per os for 20 days were retrospectively evaluated for total serum PSA reduction. A decrease of PSA value > 5% was considered correlated with the antibiotic therapy. RESULTS: A total of 26 outpatients were evaluated (median age = 65 years). Median total serum PSA concentrations, before and after LVX therapy, were 7.1 ng/ml (range 4.1-15 ng/ml) and 5.8 ng/ml (2-15 ng/ml), respectively (p= n.s). The median reduction of total PSA was 16.6% (range 5.7 - 63.6%). A statistically significant decrease of median total PSA was observed in 15 out of 26 patients (57.6%): 7.2 ng/ml and 4.2 ng/ml before and after LVX therapy, respectively (p=0.002); the marker normalized in 7 out of 15 patients (46.7%). In all the remaining patients prostate biopsy was repeated: prostate cancer (Pca) was detected in 1 out of 8 patients with significant reduction of total PSA and in 4 out of 11 patients with no significant marker decrease. The incidence of Pca in second prostate biopsies raised from 19% (5 cases out of 26) to 26% (5 cases out of 19). CONCLUSIONS: Treatment with LVX significantly reduced PSA values in over half of the patients with asymptomatic prostatitis, elevated total PSA and normal DRE and urinalysis. This approach could be applied in the ambulatory setting in order to increase the specificity of total PSA testing, reducing the number of negative, unnecessary, prostate biopsies.