Ibrahim NH, et al. - In a study amongst 80 prostate cancer patients (50 localized and 30 metastatic) and 30 benign prostatic hyperplasia patients in comparison with 50 normal controls, researchers assessed the peripheral blood levels of miR-21, miR-141, miR-221, and miR-18a expression, using RT-PCR. The results of analysis of miR-21, miR-141, miR-18a, and miR-221 in the plasma of prostate cancer (PC) patients exhibited that miR-18a is a robust discriminator of PC patients from healthy controls as it had the highest AUC, while miR-221 gave better distinction of metastatic from localized PC, and when miR-18a and miR-221 were combined for distinguishing patients with metastatic PC, it would raise the sensitivity to 96.4% at a specificity of 100%. This prevailing study suggests that analysis of these miRNAs could have clinical value in improving prostate-specific antigen testing.