ArticleThe Prostate2019
TMPRSS2-ERG fusions linked to prostate cancer racial health disparities: A focus on Africa.
Article in The Prostate, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- The research progress on diagnostic indicators related to prostate-specific antigen gray-zone prostate cancer.BMC cancer · 2025Pooled it
- Early-Onset Prostate Cancer: Epidemiology, Risk Factors, Biology, Clinical Features, Management, and Early Detection.MedComm · 2026Review
- Diagnosis of Prostate Cancer: A Comparative Evaluation of Biological Techniques.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Epigenetic modulation of prostate cancer disparities in men with African ancestry.Nature reviews. Urology · 2026Review
- A unique transcriptomic landscape defines African-specific grade group 1 prostate cancer.Research square · 2026Article
- Circulating cell-free DNA profiling reveals ancestry-dependent genetic variation in metastatic prostate cancer.Molecular biomedicine · 2026Article
- Methylation reprogramming associated with aggressive prostate cancer and ancestral disparities.Molecular systems biology · 2025Article
- The Germline and Somatic Origins of Prostate Cancer Heterogeneity.Cancer discovery · 2025Article
- Exploring therapeutic applications ofFrontiers in oncology · 2025Review
- From molecular mechanisms of prostate cancer to translational applications: based on multi-omics fusion analysis and intelligent medicine.Health information science and systems · 2024Review
- A cross-sectional study of ERG expression and the relationship with clinicopathological features of Prostate cancer in Southwestern Uganda.Diagnostic pathology · 2024Article
- Genetic and biological drivers of prostate cancer disparities in Black men.Nature reviews. Urology · 2024Review
- Acquired copy number variation in prostate tumours: a review of common somatic copy number alterations, how they are formed and their clinical utility.British journal of cancer · 2024Review
- Advances in Prostate Cancer Biomarkers and Probes.Cyborg and bionic systems (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Review
- Clinical Biofluid Assays for Prostate Cancer.Cancers · 2023Review
- Genome-wide interrogation of structural variation reveals novel African-specific prostate cancer oncogenic drivers.Genome medicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Racial disparities in prostate cancer: A complex interplay between socioeconomic inequities and genomics.Cancer letters · 2022Article
- Immune Inflammation Pathways as Therapeutic Targets to Reduce Lethal Prostate Cancer in African American Men.Cancers · 2021Review
- An overview of cancer health disparities: new approaches and insights and why they matter.Carcinogenesis · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe androgen-regulated gene TMPRSS2 to the ETS transcription factor gene ERG fusion is the most common genomic alteration acquired during prostate tumorigenesis and biased toward men of European ancestry. In contrast, African American men present with more advanced disease, yet their tumors are less likely to acquire TMPRSS2-ERG. Data for Africa is scarce.
methodsRNA was made available for genomic analyses from 181 prostate tissue biopsy cores from Black South African men, 94 with and 87 without pathological evidence for prostate cancer. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was used to screen for the TMPRSS2-ERG fusion, while transcript junction coordinates and isoform frequencies, including novel gene fusions, were determined using targeted RNA sequencing.
resultsHere we report a frequency of 13% for TMPRSS2-ERG in tumors from Black South Africans. Present in 12/94 positive versus 1/87 cancer negative prostate tissue cores, this suggests a 92.62% predictivity for a positive cancer diagnosis (P = 0.0031). At a frequency of almost half that reported for African Americans and roughly a quarter of that reported for men of European ancestry, acquisition of TMPRSS2-ERG appears to be inversely associated with aggressive prostate cancer. Further support was provided by linking the presence of TMPRSS2-ERG to low-grade disease in younger patients (P = 0.0466), with higher expressing distal ERG fusion junction coordinates.
conclusionsOnly the second study of its kind for the African continent, we support a link between TMPRSS2-ERG status and prostate cancer racial health disparity beyond the borders of the United States. We call for urgent evaluation of androgen deprivation therapy within Africa.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.