A decades-long European study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has found that screening men for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in their blood reduces prostate cancer deaths by about 13%.
The trial began in 1993 in the Netherlands and Belgium before expanding to France, Finland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, tracking 162,000 men aged 50–69 to assess PSA testing’s life-saving potential while weighing overdiagnosis risks.
Prostate cancer is the second most frequent cancer diagnosis made in men, and the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. To break that down, one in eight men will get prostate cancer globally. But here's the good news: many prostate cancers grow slowly and are confined to the prostate gland, where they might not cause serious harm. Caught early enough, some cases of prostate cancer can be cured.
Indeed, there are some things one can do that might lower the risk of prostate cancer, a condition that must never be ignored. So, what exactly is prostate cancer and its warning signs, and how is it treated? Click through and find out more about one of the most common cancers in men worldwide.