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Prostate Cancer Rise Prompts Concerns About Screening Recommendations

Researchers are concerned that 2012 guidance to limit screening for prostate cancer may be contributing to a sharp increase in advanced prostate cancer diagnoses, the New York Times reported. A study published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians found that prostate cancer incidence rose 3% annually between 2014 and 2021, after declining 6.4% annually between 2007 and 2014. In men 55 and older, advanced prostate cancer diagnoses rose 6% each year in the later time period. In 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which is made up of medical experts who make preventive care recommendations based on available evidence, discouraged routine prostate cancer screening for healthy men. The task force noted that prostate cancer often grows slowly without causing symptoms or harm. Thus, experts looked to reduce unnecessary harm from treatment—including lasting side effects, such as incontinence and impotence. In 2018, the USPSTF updated its recommendation, suggesting that screening should be an individual decision for men 55 to 69 and should stop at 70. “The pendulum may have swung too far in one direction, where we were afraid of overtreatment,” Bill Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society and an author on the report, told the Times, “and now we’re not finding these cancers early on, when they can be treated and are more curable, and we’re more likely to find metastatic disease that is not curable.” The USPSTF is in the process of updating the prostate cancer screening guidelines. However, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, canceled a July task force meeting slated to discuss cardiovascular disease prevention, raising uncertainty about the status of future updates.

Government Report on Alcohol and Health Risk May Be Withheld From Publication

A Health and Human Services (HHS)-commissioned report that weighed available evidence about drinking alcohol and health outcomes, including associations with increased cancer risk, may never be published in its final form. In the study, authors noted consuming alcohol has been linked to mortality in seven types of cancer and in the report observed that risks for certain types of cancer rise starting at just one drink per week. But, according to reporting in Vox that was confirmed in STAT, study authors say the Trump administration told them it has no plans to publish the final report. HHS commissioned the Alcohol Intake and Health Study in 2022 to inform updates to the government’s dietary guidelines that are scheduled to be made before the end of this year. “I think it’s a shame,” Katherine Keyes, an epidemiologist at Columbia University and a co-author of the report, told Vox. “Anyone who is a decision-making authority, you want them to have all of the information.” Recent research has brought increasing scrutiny on alcohol’s link to cancer and other diseases, even when it’s consumed at what has been considered moderate levels. In December 2022, Congress commissioned a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that found drinking moderate levels of alcohol was associated with beneficial health outcomes, though it did link moderate drinking to higher breast cancer risk. Some experts criticized the National Academies report for using criteria that ultimately excluded many studies that found harmful effects and for commissioning authors with financial ties to the alcohol industry. The federal government released the National Academies study to the public in late 2024. Researchers submitted the Alcohol Intake and Health Study for public comment in January—that initial draft is currently available online—but the government has taken no action since receiving the final draft in March. Three authors of the report told Vox that the administration does not plan to publish the report, but they hope to publish the findings in an academic journal. “People are going to get sick who might have avoided getting sick, because they might have decreased their drinking,” Priscilla Martinez, deputy scientific director of the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute and one of the co-authors, told Vox. In the STAT article, an HHS spokesperson confirmed the final draft had been provided but did not answer questions about whether the report would be released or considered in the dietary guidelines update.

Low Screening Rates Linked to Higher Cervical Cancer Incidence in U.S. Counties

U.S. counties with low cervical cancer screening rates have nearly twice the cervical cancer incidence and mortality of counties with high screening rates, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers used data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-22 database to examine the relationship between cervical cancer screening and outcomes in 1,086 counties. They focused on the 141 counties with 80% or higher screening uptake and the 70 counties with screening rates of less than 70%. The incidence of cervical cancer—which can be prevented by treating precancerous lesions identified during screening—was 83% higher in low-coverage counties than in high-coverage counties. In addition, mortality from cervical cancer was 96% higher in low-coverage counties than in high-coverage counties. Researchers also noted that low-coverage counties often had lower average incomes. All low-coverage counties had a median household income below $75,000 per year, but only about half of the high-coverage counties had median incomes less than $75,000, Healio reported. The counties also showed a marked rural-urban divide: 87.1% of low-coverage counties were in rural areas, and 84.4% of high-coverage counties were in urban areas. “We expect to see higher rates in low-screening counties, but the magnitude took us by surprise,” Trisha L. Amboree, a study author and a researcher at Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, told Healio. “That’s extremely concerning because we know that cervical cancer is mostly preventable through timely screening, early detection and treatment of precancerous lesions.”