Prostate cancer screening 'not required' for all men

Committee recommends against universal NHS testing

- JANE KIRBY

Prostate cancer screening should not be made available to 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 does not recommend population-wide screening using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, because doing so would be “likely to cause more harm than good”.

Experts are waiting to see data from a large trial launched by Prostate Cancer UK last week, which aims to establish whether combining the PSA test with other tests, such as rapid MRI scans, could be a more effective protocol than that which is currently in place. The research could potentially lead to a recommendation for population-wide screening.

For now, the committee will only put forward a recommendation to screen men with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations - which put 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, while he wanted to see earlier diagnosis and quicker treatment, this would need to be balanced against “the harms that wider screening could cause to men”.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, a former national cancer director and chair of the UKNSC, told a briefing that modelling shows that “whole-population screening may lead to a small reduction in prostate cancer deaths, but the very high levels of overdiagnosis” mean that the potential for harm outweighs the benefits.

Many high-profile figures, including broadcaster Sir Tony Robinson, journalist Dermot Murnaghan, and the former prime minister David Cameron have expressed their “disappointment” at the decision.

Many experts argue that the PSA test is not very reliable, because men with a high PSA level may not have cancer, and some men with cancer have a normal PSA result.