Daxor Corporation Announces That Durham VA Medical Center Acquires BVA-100 Blood Volume Analyzer to Assess Obesity-Related Hemodilution of Serum Cancer Markers

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - October 19, 2009) -

Daxor Corporation (NYSE Amex: DXR), a medical instrumentation and biotechnology company, today announced the receipt of a signed trial agreement from the Institute for Medical Research at the Durham Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center of Durham, North Carolina. This agreement will provide the VA Medical Center with a Blood Volume Analyzer-100 (BVA-100), an instrument which enables semi-automated measurement of a patient’s total blood volume and its constituent components -- red blood cell volume and plasma volume. Blood volume abnormalities have been observed in a variety of medical conditions. In particular, studies have shown that obese individuals show expanded plasma volumes relative to healthy controls.

Prostate cancer is a relatively common disease, with over 200,000 new cases diagnosed in the United States each year. The introduction of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening has significantly decreased mortality in the last 20 years, such that approximately 30,000 annual deaths are now attributable to this disease. Although PSA is not an ideal diagnostic marker, as it produces both false positives and false negatives, most American males are subjected to PSA screening for prostate cancer. It is therefore important to identify factors which might confound the screening process and create delays in the detection of prostate malignancies.

Obesity has been shown to contribute to the sub-optimal efficacy of prostate cancer screening based on PSA levels. Obese men are diagnosed at more advanced stages of the disease relative to normal weight men. They are also at greater risk for recurring elevated PSA levels after surgery and show greater risk of death from prostate cancer relative to normal weight men. One possible explanation for the worsened clinical outcomes in obese men is the observation that obese males generally show lower serum PSA concentrations compared to normal weight men.

Dr. Lionel Bañez, who has a dual appointment at the Durham VA Medical Center as well as at the Duke University Medical Center, and Dr. Stephen Freedland of the Duke University Medical Center performed a study to examine whether the lower PSA concentrations in obese males might be attributable to an expanded plasma volume, which results in a dilution of their serum PSA levels. In their retrospective study of almost 14,000 men with prostate cancer, they reported that obese men did, in fact, show both increased plasma volume as well as lower PSA concentrations. This suggests that hemodilution may be responsible for the lower PSA concentrations observed in obese men with prostate cancer. These findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (2007; 298(19):2275-2280). Dr. Bañez and Dr. Freedland are now planning to conduct a follow-up study which may involve up to 1,000 subjects using the BVA-100. The outcome of this upcoming study may be useful in finding a way to improve the predictive accuracy of cancer screening methods by adjusting for hemodilution.

Daxor Corporation manufactures and markets the BVA-100, which is used in conjunction with Volumex, Daxor’s single use diagnostic kit. For more information regarding Daxor Corporation’s Blood Volume Analyzer BVA-100, visit Daxor’s website at www.Daxor.com.