February 23, 2023

expert reaction to conference presentation on the possibility of a UK prostate cancer screening programme

A poster abstract (not a peer-reviewed paper) presented at the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium looks at prostate cancer screening.

Professor Ros Eeles, Professor of Oncogenetics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London and Honorary Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Trust, said:

“The study shows very interesting data which support the shift towards the investigation of how to implement prostate screening. European studies of using the blood marker PSA to direct screening have shown a reduction in mortality, but the concern has been overdiagnosis, including detection of some cases which would never have caused harm, and potential harms of overtreatment.

“However, we know that about a quarter of cases will be aggressive and cause deaths. There is therefore a need to identify techniques that will tip the balance of screening from risk to benefit. This useful study has looked at the use of MRI imaging and biopsy techniques which have a lower risk of infection and are showing promise in this area. It shows us a rationale for the way forward to implementing a prostate screening programme in the UK. The challenge will be to find better markers which indicate the presence of aggressive disease and to refine our use of genetic risk stratification to be able to target new methods of screening to those at highest risk. Our team’s research is investigating the role of genetic tests which can better risk stratify populations to target such screening programmes.”

Conference abstract: ‘Prostate cancer screening: have we tipped the seesaw?’ by Natalia Norori et al. was presented at the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

There is no full paper and the conference abstract is not peer reviewed.

Declared interests

No reply to our request for DOIs was received.