GAINESVILLE, Fla., Sept. 16 (UPI) -- A meta-analysis does not support efficacy of routine prostate cancer screening but a single test for men at age 60 may be beneficial, U.S. researchers say.
Professor Philipp Dahm and colleagues at the University of Florida reviewed six randomized-controlled trials, involving 387,286 men.
The review, published in the British Medical Journal, finds screening helps diagnose prostate cancer at an earlier stage but does not have a significant impact on mortality -- and comes at the risk of unnecessary treatment and a lower quality of life.
In the second study, Hans Lilja, a professor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues show that a single prostate-specific antigen test at age 60 shows 90 percent of prostate cancer deaths occurred in men with highest PSA levels at age 60. However, men with average or low PSA levels had negligible rates of prostate cancer or death by age 85, the study says.
The results suggest that at least half of men age 60 and older might be eliminated from further prostate cancer screening, Lilja says.
