Fig 6. Preferential accumulation of progestogens and 3β-OH, Δ5-steroids is observed in human prostate tissue.
Box and whisker plots of (A) blood concentrations, (B) normal prostate tissue concentrations, and (C) tissue to blood concentration ratios (tissue concentrations normalized to mean blood concentrations) for four steroids using samples from twenty prostate cancer patients. Prostatic tissue was collected at the same time as peripheral blood in patients undergoing radical prostatectomy. The ratio for pregnenolone was larger than the ratios for all other steroids; the ratio for progesterone was larger than the ratio for AD and the ratio for DHEA was larger than the ratio for AD (two-tailed Mann-Whitney U tests after Kruskal-Wallis test, p < 0.001 for all comparisons).