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Over the past year, there has been significant debate regarding whether the UK should introduce a national screening programme for prostate cancer.
Multiple trials have investigated prostate cancer screening over the years, commonly using the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test. This research has highlighted issues around the rates of false positive results, potentially causing anxiety and unnecessary investigations, overdiagnosis, potentially resulting in unnecessary treatments, and false negative results, leading to missed cancers.
The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) last examined the body of evidence in 2020, recommending against introducing a national screening programme as, at that time, the potential harms outweighed the benefits.
This year, the UK NSC conducted a review of updated evidence to assess whether the balance of benefits versus risks/harms had been tipped in favour of a targeted or population-based national screening programme.
The committee commissioned the Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research (SCHARR) to develop the updated 2025 prostate cancer screening modelling study. The SCHARR report predicts the potential impact of various screening strategies, including population screening and targeted approaches aimed at high-risk groups including black men, men with a family history and men with a BRCA gene variation.
The UK NSC have opened a 12-week public consultation to ask individuals and organisations to provide feedback on this study and on the wording of a draft recommendation based on its findings.
Scientists came along to this briefing to hear from representatives from the UK NSC, and independent scientists who contributed to the review. The expert panel members answered questions about the evidence considered, the balance of benefits and risks, the draft recommendation and the UK NSC’s timelines and next steps.
Speakers included:
Prof Sir Mike Richards, Chair of the UK National Screening Committee
Prof Freddie Hamdy CBE, Nuffield Professor of Surgery and Professor of Urology at the University of Oxford, and Honorary Consultant Urological Surgeon at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals
Prof Derek Rosario, Consultant Urological Surgeon, Honorary Professor at Sheffield Hallam University, and Clinical Advisor (Prostate) to the UK National Screening Committee
Prof Jenny Donovan OBE, Professor of Social Medicine, University of Bristol
Prof Hashim Ahmed, chief investigator of the TRANSFORM trial, and Professor of Urology, Imperial College London