A prostate cancer expert has said statistics showing cancer rates in men under 50 have more than tripled between 2001 and 2023 “should be a wake up call for the UK’s National Screening Committee.”

Prof Chris Booth, founder of men’s health charity CHAPS and a former consultant urologist with more than 40 years’ experience said the statistics from The World Cancer Research Fund “endorse the trend CHAPS has seen over a number of years.”

The data is particularly alarming since significant increases were found in several cancers among younger adults, with prostate cancer showing the largest increase.

The analysis by the WCRF found that, as well as soaring rates in prostate cancer, there were rates of bowel, kidney and womb cancer had at least doubled in the last two decades.

And the data showed that cases of liver, pancreatic and breast cancer have also increased significantly during the same period.
Prof Booth, who believes the UK needs to have a nationwide prostate cancer screening programme, said the increase in the number of younger men being diagnosed with prostate cancer “is the main reason CHAPS offers risk-based, programmed PSA (prostate specific antigen) testing for all men from age 40, not just those with a family history or black ethnicity from age 45, as currently recommended in the UK.”

And he also said that earlier testing helped to create a better picture of a man’s likelihood of prostate cancer through better understanding of their PSA scores.

“The second important reason to start screening for prostate cancer from age 40, apart from the opportunity to help identify cancer at an earlier, and thus more treatable, stage, is that a baseline PSA in a man’s 40s is a good predictor of the likelihood of prostate cancer manifesting in a man’s late 40s and 50s,” he said.

“This is indeed a wake-up call, especially for the UK National Screening Committee and the Department of Health and Social Care who should look again at the current policy in the light of this information”.