Prostate cancer screening is just as good as the routine checks women have for breast cancer, according to a new study.
Researchers say the findings show it no longer makes sense to reject prostate cancer screening on the one hand while endorsing screening for breast cancer on the other.
Dr Sigrid Carlsson, who led the study at the German Cancer Research Centre, said: “If prostate cancer screening were extended to the wider population, then the outcomes are likely to be very similar to breast cancer.”
Prostate cancer kills more than 12,000 men a year in the UK, slightly more than the number of women who die from breast cancer.
But while older women have been screened for breast cancer in the UK since 1988, government advisers have always ruled there isn’t enough evidence to back prostate screening in men.
Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy and former prime minister Lord David Cameron, who have both been diagnosed with the cancer, have called for the UK to introduce screening so more men are diagnosed at an earlier, treatable stage.
The new research analysed results from the PROBASE trial of just over 39,000 men having prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests in combination with MRI scans, and compared them with those from 2.8 million women having a mammogram as part of Germany’s breast cancer screening programme.
Encouragingly, prostate screening detected up to 74% of cancers that had begun to spread, roughly the same proportion picked up by routine mammograms, according to results revealed at the European Association of Urology Congress in London.
But prostate screening detected more non-aggressive cancers that only need monitoring – up to 31%, whereas breast screening only detected 22%.
Some experts warned that this could lead men to have treatment they don’t need, putting themselves at risk of serious side effects such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
Simon Grieveson, from the charity Prostate Cancer UK, said: “There still is not enough evidence here to prove that introducing screening will save the lives of men with aggressive cancer while also protecting men with slow-growing cancer from potentially harmful treatments they don’t even need.”
But others have welcomed the findings.
Professor Sam Hare, from the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The PROBASE trial lends further weight behind a risk-stratified, PSA and MRI-based approach to screening for prostate cancer, in a study population that is similar to the UK.”
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The UK National Screening Committee, which advises the government, recently recommended prostate screening only for those at very high risk because they have certain genetic mutations.
The decision was widely criticised and Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said he will thrash out the evidence with experts before making a final decision on NHS screening.
