Prostate cancer screening trial to recruit thousands of men

Main prostate cancer screening study aimed at finding the best way to detect the disease, was launched in the UK.

The first letters were sent by GPs inviting men to join the study, the largest of its kind in decades.

The £42 million Transform trial is funded by Prostate Cancer UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Hashim Ahmed, director of the study, said: “The transformation is truly a game changer… the start of recruitment today marks a critical step towards delivering the results that men urgently need to make prostate cancer diagnosis safer and more effective so we can unlock the potential of prostate cancer screening in the UK.”

The study will include men aged 50-74, with a lower age limit of 45 for black men, who have twice the risk of developing and dying from prostate cancer compared to white men.

It will not be possible to volunteer for the study, but Prostate Cancer UK strongly encourages anyone who receives a letter to take part.

The study will look at how rapid MRI scans of the prostate can be combined with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests to improve the accuracy of cancer diagnosis.

Currently, men over 50 can request a PSA test, which detects abnormally high levels of a protein in the blood, but it is unreliable because it detects many prostate cancers that never need treatment and misses others that do.

The study will also use saliva tests that extract DNA from saliva to see if it is more accurate than PSA readings.

Matthew Hobbs, director of Prostate Cancer Research UK, said current diagnostic methods were not detecting enough aggressive cancers and were causing too much harm.

“We hear from men who were diagnosed late and whose lives could have been saved if they had been assessed or tested earlier. We also hear from many men who have suffered from incontinence or impotence as a result of the treatment they were undergoing,” Mr Hobbs said.

“Some of these men did not require this treatment, and this is the harm we need to try to avoid.”

Danny Burkey, 60, from West Yorkshire, is terminally ill with prostate cancer. By the time he was diagnosed four years ago, it had already spread to his bones.

The former teacher and father of three told the BBC that if men had been offered regular check-ups from the age of 50, his disease might have been detected when it was still treatable.

“I think the screening program will be a game changer. If you want to prevent men from ending up in the position I am in, and if we want to prevent 12,000 men dying prematurely every year, this is the obvious solution.”

The study's opening comes a week before the National Screening Committee (NSC) – the expert body that advises the NHS – is due to announce whether it should recommend introducing screening for the disease, the most common cancer in men in the UK.

Previously, the NSC concluded that the harms of screening outweigh the benefits.

Initial results from the Transform trial are due in around two years, after which it will enroll up to 300,000 people across the UK.