In a new study from the German Cancer Research Center, researchers estimated the elevated risk of advanced or fatal prostate cancer among relatives of men with the disease.
They provided new data that could help refine guidelines for the age at which screening should begin.
Current guidelines note that men with a family history of prostate cancer have a greater risk and should begin screening early. However, due to the lack of sufficient data, the age at which early screening should begin has been unclear.
In the study, the team conducted an analysis of all male residents of Sweden born after 1931, as well as their fathers.
Between 1958 to 2015, 88,999 out of a total of 6,343,727 men were diagnosed with advanced-stage (III or IV) prostate cancer or died from the disease.
The researchers used these data to calculate the age at which men who had a father, brother, or son diagnosed with prostate cancer reached the “screening risk threshold;” i.e., the same level of prostate cancer risk as at the age of 50 years across the entire population.
They found that men with a family history of prostate cancer reached the screening risk threshold up to 12 years earlier.
However, different men reached this threshold at different ages, depending on how many of their first-degree relatives had prostate cancer and the age at which the relatives were diagnosed.
By comparing their calculations with various guidelines, the researchers determined that men with a family history of prostate cancer reach a high enough risk to start screening anywhere from 2 to 11 years earlier than currently recommended.
These findings could lead to greater personalization of screening guidelines. Further research could help validate these results in populations of different ethnicity, while also accounting for genetics and lifestyle.
If you care about prostate cancer, please read studies about this healthy diet may reduce prostate cancer development and findings of new prostate cancer test could avoid unnecessary biopsies.
For more information about prostate cancer treatment and prevention, please see recent studies about a new way to detect prostate cancer with nearly 100% accuracy and results showing that this stuff can cause spread of prostate cancer.
The study is published in PLOS Medicine. One author of the study is Mahdi Fallah.
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