Prostate cancer lifetime risk trebles in 25 years – Research
Boys born in 2015 will have almost three times the risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point during their lives than those born in 1990.
Latest figures from research findings of Cancer Research UK show that the lifetime risk of prostate cancer will rise from five per cent (1 in 20) for boys born in 1990 to just over 14 per cent (1 in 7) for boys born in 2015.
The findings of the Cancer Research UK that was made available to the Ghana News Agency on Thursday said the this was largely due to increased use of the Prostate Specific Antigen Test (PSA).
According to the researchers, the test detects a wide variety of prostate cancers, including those which will never be life-threatening, as well as aggressive forms of the disease, but unfortunately it does not distinguish between the two.
It said PSA testing had rapidly boosted the number of men being diagnosed with the disease.
The findings indicated that around 41,000 men per year were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United Kingdom – up from around 15,000 men per year 25 years ago.
It noted that the rise in prostate cancer diagnoses was not just because of increased testing but were also due to more men living to an older age, when the disease was most likely to develop.
It said the good news was that death rates from prostate cancer in the UK were 18 per cent lower than they were 20 years ago.
This, it said, was likely to be because of improved treatments and PSA tests, which could help diagnose cancers earlier, when the chances of survival were greater.
It reiterated that around 10,700 men died each year from prostate cancer in the UK.
Research has lead to more widespread and earlier use of hormone treatments prescribed since the early 1990s.
More recently, a range of new hormone treatments have been developed to prolong life – such as abiraterone which was approved by NICE in May 2012 to treat patients with advanced disease, and which is a drug which Cancer Research UK scientists helped to develop.
Cancer Research UK’s scientists have carried out research that suggests a protein called Beta-microseminoprotein (MSMB) may be better at identifying men at higher risk of developing the disease.
But more work is needed to prove if this test could be useful, the report indicated.
Source: GNA