Early diagnosis of urological diseases is often difficult due to the lack of specific biomarkers. More powerful and less invasive biomarkers that can be used simultaneously to identify urological diseases could improve patient outcomes. The aim of this study to evaluate a urological disease-specific scoring system established with a machine learning (ML) approach using immunoglobulin (Ig) N-glycan signature. Ig N-glycan signature were analyzed by capillary electrophoresis from 1,312 serum subjects with hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (n = 234), castration-resistant prostate cancer (n = 94), renal cell carcinoma (n = 100), upper urinary tract urothelial cancer (n = 105), bladder cancer (n = 176), germ cell tumors (n = 73), benign prostatic hyperplasia (n = 95), urosepsis (n = 145), and urinary tract infection (n = 21) as well as healthy volunteers (n = 269). Ig N-glycan signature data were used in a supervised-ML model to establish a scoring system that gave the probability of the presence of a urological disease. Diagnostic performance was evaluated using the area under a receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The supervised-ML urologic disease-specific scores clearly discriminated the urological diseases (AUC 0.78-1.00) and found a distinct N-glycan pattern that contributed to detect each disease. Limitations included the retrospective and limited pathological information regarding urological diseases. The supervised-ML urological disease-specific scoring system based on Ig N-glycan signature showed excellent diagnostic ability for nine urological diseases using a one-time serum collection and could be a promising approach for the diagnosis of urological diseases.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Author