Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued a controversial draft recommendation against routine screening for prostate cancer. The rationale was that for asymptomatic men, prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening offered unclear survival benefit while posing at least a small risk. In this week’s NEJM, an article by Schröder et al. report updated data… Read More…
In the latest article in our Clinical Practice review series, “Screening for Prostate Cancer,” current recommendations for prostate-specific antigen testing are reviewed, as well as the initial results of two randomized trials. The potential risks of screening, including morbidity from overdiagnosis and overtreatment, are described. In the United States, approximately 90% of prostate cancers are… Read More…
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a draft recommendation earlier this month that men with no symptoms of prostate cancer should not be screened with the PSA test. There has been debate about PSA screening for as long as it has existed, and that continues today. On NEJM.org we have published the views of… Read More…
Prostate cancer is a hormonally driven illness that, for 70 years, has been treated in kind—by blocking androgen production or wasting its supplies. But once metastatic prostate cancer resisted the depleting effect of castration or the castrating chemotherapy agents, it was commonly believed the disease had escaped androgen regulation and hormonal agents would no longer… Read More…
Andriole et al. tested dutasteride, an inhibitor of 5-reductase in the prostate, in a large, randomized trial to determine its ability to prevent prostate cancer. Over the 4 years of the trial, dutasteride, as compared with placebo, reduced the relative risk of biopsy-detected prostate cancer by 23%. The reduction was limited mainly to tumors with… Read More…
