Prostate cancer cases spike in this US state as doctors share likely reason

Cases of prostate cancer are on the rise in California, according to new research.A study by UC San Francisco (UCSF) included nearly 388,000 men who had prostate cancer between 2004 and 2021.The incidence rate of cases increased 6.7% per year on average between 2011 and 2021, the JAMA-published research revealed.Although cases rose, prostate cancer mortality rates declined 2.6% per year from 2004 to 2012, and plateaued from 2012 to 2021.These trends were similar across age, race, ethnicity and region, the researchers found.The rising cases correspond with a change in guidelines for PSA (prostate-specific antigen) testing, in which the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) stopped recommending the screenings in 2012, according to the UCSF press release.The guidelines were changed in order to reduce the number of prostate cancer patients who were treated with “potentially harmful interventions” for non-threatening forms of the disease.According to UCSF, prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men and the second-leading cause of cancer deaths.Most prostate cancer tumors, however, are low-grade and “never spread” — and the PSA screening “does not differentiate between aggressive or non-aggressive tumors, leading many men to be diagnosed with cancers that would not hurt them in the long run,” the release stated.“On the other hand, if screening isn’t done, timely diagnosis of more advanced cancers can be missed – those cancers might have been successfully treated if found early,” UCSF noted.The freeze in screenings “unfortunately may have led to one of the largest subsequent rises in incidence of distant stage disease,” according to the researchers.UCSF wrote that these findings “reinforce the need for screening that can identify potentially fatal tumors without raising false alarms about ones that pose no threat to the patient.”“Figuring out the best way to screen for prostate cancer continues to be a challenge for res...