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Quantifying the role of PSA screening in the US prostate cancer mortality decline

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Cancer Causes & Control Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

To quantify the plausible contribution of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening to the nearly 30% decline in the US prostate cancer mortality rate observed during the 1990s.

Methods

Two mathematical modeling teams of the US National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network independently projected disease mortality in the absence and presence of PSA screening. Both teams relied on Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry data for disease incidence, used common estimates of PSA screening rates, and assumed that screening, by shifting disease from distant to local-regional clinical stage, confers a corresponding improvement in disease-specific survival.

Results

The teams projected similar mortality increases in the absence of screening and decreases in the presence of screening after 1985. By 2000, the models projected that 45% (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) to 70% (University of Michigan) of the observed decline in prostate cancer mortality could be plausibly attributed to the stage shift induced by screening.

Conclusions

PSA screening may account for much, but not all, of the observed drop in prostate cancer mortality. Other factors, such as changing treatment practices, may also have played a role in improving prostate cancer outcomes.

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Acknowledgment

This research was supported by U01 CA88160, a co-operative agreement between the National Cancer Institute and the collaborating institutions. This funding mechanism explicitly requires collaboration between the awardees and investigators at the funding source, who provide guidance to the awardees regarding goals and deliverables of the funded projects. In the work presented here, the collaborating institutions were responsible for model development, and investigators at the funding source were responsible for overall guidance and for providing key model inputs, such as other-cause mortality and PSA dissemination trends. These inputs were used by both models for standardization and comparability purposes.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Alex Tsodikov

    Present address: Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

  2. Aniko Szabo

    Present address: Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA

  3. Jake Wegelin

    Present address: Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA

  4. Dante diTommaso

    Present address: Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Basel, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 1100 Fairview Ave N, M2-B230, Seattle, WA, 98109-1024, USA

    Ruth Etzioni, Seth Falcon, Dante diTommaso, Kent Karnofski & Roman Gulati

  2. Department of Biostatistics, University of California at Davis, Davis, USA

    Alex Tsodikov & Jake Wegelin

  3. Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, USA

    Angela Mariotto & Eric Feuer

  4. Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, USA

    Aniko Szabo

  5. Keck School of Medicine and Norris Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    David F. Penson

Authors
  1. Ruth Etzioni
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  2. Alex Tsodikov
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  3. Angela Mariotto
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ruth Etzioni.

Additional information

Detailed supplemental descriptions of the FHCRC and UMICH models are available at http://cisnet.cancer.gov/profiles/.

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Etzioni, R., Tsodikov, A., Mariotto, A. et al. Quantifying the role of PSA screening in the US prostate cancer mortality decline. Cancer Causes Control 19, 175–181 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-007-9083-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-007-9083-8

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