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New Study Suggests PSA Screening Should Start at a Younger Age,
May Only be Needed Biennially
Original Story by Elizabeth Cohen A new study indicates that a popular blood test used to screen men over age 50 for prostate cancer may be more valuable if first obtained earlier in life and repeated less often thereafter. "Our model would suggest that, compared to testing at age 50, that for every 10,000 men screened, we would prevent one prostate cancer death," said Dr. H. Ballentine Carter, a study author and a urologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. The Hopkins urology department, or Brady Urological Institute, was called the "Nation's Best" in a recent survey by U.S. News Online.
Read the abstract from JAMA Check the latest PSA Screening Recommendations from the |
Reporting in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, Carter and other researchers
used computer modeling to predict the effectiveness of using the prostate-specific antigen blood
test to screen younger men for cancer. They determined that screening would be more effective
if done at age 40 and 45, then every two years beginning at age 50. Until now, the American
Cancer Society had recommended that the test should be offered to all men yearly after age 50,
or "younger" for those at high risk for the disease.
