Prostate Cancer Cases Set to Double by 2040, Experts Warn of Urgent Need for Improved Detection and Treatment Options

The number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer will double by 2040 to 2.9 million annually worldwide. An international expert group writes this in an extensive analysis which was published on Thursday in the medical scientific journal The Lancet. The results will be presented and further explained this weekend at a major European conference of urologists in Paris.

The expected increase in the number of cases goes hand in hand with an increase in the life expectancy of the world population. The increasing burden of disease could become a particular problem in low- and middle-income countries, experts warn. It is already the case that the diagnosis is made relatively late there, which means that the majority of patients in these countries are incurable.

With more older men in the future, this will mean a greater influx of patients. This is becoming acute because there is also a shortage of radiotherapists and urologists in these countries. Detection and treatment options therefore urgently need to improve. The experts estimate that the number of prostate cancer deaths worldwide will rise from 375,000 in 2020 to almost 700,000 in 2040, an increase of 85 percent.

“It will be difficult to turn the tide,” says oncological urologist Harm van Melick, who is also present at the conference in Paris. “You cannot simply solve this through a change in lifestyle. Whether you will develop prostate cancer is actually determined from the cradle, with the risk increasing as you get older.”

In the Netherlands and most other Western countries, a large increase in the number of prostate cancer cases has already occurred, driven by demographic developments and improved diagnostics. As a medical advisor to the Integrated Cancer Center of the Netherlands (IKNL), Van Melick contributed to a future report for the Netherlands, in which until 2032 only a slight increase in the number of prostate cancer diagnoses is expected.

At the global level the situation is very different. Until now, scientific research into prostate cancer has mainly focused on men of European descent, while the risk of this form of cancer is roughly twice as high for men with an African background. More research is urgently needed to identify the causes of these ethnic differences in disease burden, the authors argue The Lancet.

Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men in the Netherlands. Last year, 14,562 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer. The vast majority (92 percent) were 60 years or older at that time. Of all patients, 36 percent were 75 years or older. On average, survival in this older group of patients is lower than that of younger patients, which cannot be fully explained by how far the cancer has already progressed.

If the tumor is discovered early, it can usually be treated well. If prostate cancer has spread to lymph nodes, bones or other tissue, the prognosis is less favorable. In this group, approximately half die within five years of diagnosis. Van Melick: “It is therefore not surprising that there are more and more voices in Europe in favor of starting a population screening for prostate cancer.”

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2024-04-05 15:42:17
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