2010-01-12

The UK government experts are considering offering routine screening of prostate cancer. However, concerns over the false positive prostate cancer test are recently raised in the British Journal of Cancer. While previous data from the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer conducted in 7 countries demonstrated a 20 % reduction in mortality, recent results from the Finnish part of the trial showed a 12.5% false positive rate when diagnosing the levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA), precluding those men from future screening even though they were at risk of developing the disease subsequently. The findings suggest more research is needed in order to substantiate the benefits over the adverse effects and costs of routine screening.

(BBC News)

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