The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force based its new national recommendations about prostate cancer screening on the systematic review of 63 research studies conducted by a team of UC Davis researchers from the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research (CHPR). Led by CHPR faculty member Joshua Fenton, M.D., Professor of Family and Community Medicine, the team’s findings on prostate-specific antigen-based (PSA) screening were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on May 8, 2018.

Fenton said the USPSTF process is painstaking, methodical and was rigorously vetted with public and expert review prior to, during and after completion of the research. “I’m very proud of our team,” he said, “…and I think we achieved our goal of conveying complete and unbiased information based on current evidence.”

Fenton and his team found, for example, that PSA screening results in false positives in 10-18 percent of all men screened, with higher risk of false positives incurred by men older than 70. Additional harms related to diagnostic biopsies and from treatment are also greater in men older than 70 than in younger men.

Based on these and other findings, the Task Force now recommends against PSA screening for men 70 and older. For men ages 55-69, the Task Force now recommends that the decision to undergo periodic PSA-based screening for prostate cancer should be an individual one that includes a discussion with a clinician about both the potential benefits and the potential harms of screening. Other harms resulting from screening and subsequent treatment can include incontinence and erectile dysfunction.

In addition to Dr. Fenton, authors of the evidence report in JAMA include Heejung Bang, Ph.D., Joy Melnikow, M.D., M.P.H., Meghan Weyrich, M.P.H., and Shauna Durbin, M.P.H., from CHPR and Yu Liu, M.S., from the Dept. of Public Health Sciences at UC Davis.