Interpreting PSA Values in Transgender Women for Optimal Prostate Cancer Screening With Stephen Freedland, MD, and Farnoosh Nik-Ahd, MD

In this interview, Editorial Board member Dr. Stephen Freedland speaks with Dr. Farnoosh Nik-Ahd, Chief Urology Resident at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), about her recent first-author paper, “Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) values in transgender women receiving estrogen.” Dr. Nik-Ahd discusses the background and significance of this research, including:

Unmet needs regarding prostate cancer risk and incidence in transgender women
Questions surrounding why transgender women receiving estrogen and other gender-affirming hormones present with more aggressive disease
Their Veterans Affairs (VA) Health System study investigating PSA values in transgender women receiving estrogen
The results of the study and its potential implications for prostate cancer screening and PSA testing
Messages for clinicians about cautiously interpreting PSA values in transgender women and knowing when to refer them for further testing
Next steps for the research and determining the most effective form of screening
And more!

About Dr. Nik-Ahd and Dr. Freedland

Farnoosh Nik-Ahd, MD, is the Chief Urology Resident at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her research focuses on the risk and incidence of prostate cancer in transgender women and standards for prostate cancer screening and diagnosis in this population.

Stephen J. Freedland, MD, is Director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle and Associate Director for Education and Training at the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute. He is the Warschaw Robertson Law Families Chair in Prostate Cancer and a Professor in the Department of Urology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and also holds a Staff Physician appointment at the Durham VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Freedland has published over 700 articles and served on numerous American Urological Association and American Society of Clinical Oncology guideline panels for prostate cancer. His research interests include the role of diet, lifestyle, and obesity in cancer, cancer health disparities, and cancer risk stratification.