Predictive medicine in non-malignant urological disorders.

The potential of disease prediction in non-malignant disorders should not be undervalued. Such disorders present several characteristics which make them suitable for disease prediction: they can be wide-spread, strongly affect the patients' quality of life, lead to a heavy burden on social health expenses and have a protracted clinical course. Moreover, people who present a high risk for non-malignant disease can be successfully introduced to long-term preventive measures such as lifestyle modifications, dietary changes and improvement in hygienic conditions. There is a growing demand for developing predictive medical strategies in urology. While urological cancers are the main focus of interest, we analyse the potentialities and challenges of predictive medicine in non-malignant urological disorders, with particular attention to benign prostate hyperplasia and urolithiasis.