Prostate cancer screening: Committee says no to testing all men

Credit: jamesbenet

By Jane Kirby, PA

Prostate cancer screening should not be made routinely available for the vast majority of men in the UK, a committee advising the government has said.

In a draft recommendation, the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) said it would not recommend population screening using the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test because it “is likely to cause more harm than good”.

Experts are waiting to see data from a large trial launched by Prostate Cancer UK last week into whether combining PSA with other tests, such as rapid MRI scans, could lead to a recommendation for population-wide screening.

For now, the committee will put forward only a recommendation to screen men with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations – which puts them at far higher risk of prostate cancer – every two years, between the ages of 45 and 61.

Health secretary Wes Streeting said he would consider the findings, adding that he wanted to see earlier diagnosis and quicker treatment, but that needed to be balanced against “the harms that wider screening could cause to men”.