A correlative study of iron metabolism based on q-Dixon MRI in benign prostatic hyperplasia and prostate cancer

Clinical staging, Gleason score, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) have been accepted as factors for evaluating the prognosis of prostate cancer (PCa). With the in-depth study of iron metabolism and the development of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging technology, we used q-Dixon magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the iron content of the PCa patients’ lesions, and used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure the iron metabolism indicators in the patients’ serum samples, combined with the patients’ postoperative clinical data for analysis. We found that the serum indexes were correlated with the T2 star values, International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade, and pathological classification in PCa patients (all P < 0.001) but not in benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) patients (all P > 0.05). The utilization of q-Dixon-based MRI and serum indexes allows the noninvasive measurement of iron content in prostate lesions and the assessment of differential iron metabolism between PCa and BPH, which may be helpful for evaluating the prognosis of PCa.