Do African-American men need separate prostate cancer screening guidelines?
BACKGROUND
In 2012, the United States Preventative Services Task Force issued new guidelines recommending that male U.S. residents, irrespective of race, no longer be screened for prostate cancer. In African American men, the incidence of prostate cancer is almost 60 % higher and the mortality rate is two to three times greater than in Caucasians. The purpose of this study is to reduce African American men's prostate cancer burden by demonstrating they need separate screening guidelines.


METHODS
We performed a PubMed search using the keywords: African American, Prostate cancer, Outcomes, Molecular markers, Prostate-specific Antigen velocity, PSA density, and to derive data relevant to our hypothesis.


RESULTS
In our literature review, we identified several aspects of prostate cancer that are different in Caucasian and African American men. These included prostate cancer incidence and outcome, the clinical course of the disease, serum PSA levels, genetic differences, and social barriers. It's also important to note that the USPSTF guidelines were based on two studies, one of which reported that only 4 % of its participants were African American. The other did not report demographic information, but used participants from seven European countries with small African American populations.


CONCLUSION
Given the above, we conclude that separate prostate cancer screening guidelines are greatly necessary to help save the lives of African Americans.
['Shenoy|Divya|D|', 'Packianathan|Satyaseelan|S|', 'Chen|Allen M|AM|', 'Vijayakumar|Srinivasan|S|']
D000328:Adult D001741:African Americans D017677:Age Distribution D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D055088:Early Detection of Cancer D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008495:Medical Oncology D008875:Middle Aged D020380:Needs Assessment D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic D015995:Prevalence D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms D015203:Reproducibility of Results D018570:Risk Assessment D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity D015996:Survival Rate D014481:United States
Prostate cancer Screening guidelines African Americans