Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of additional men expected to be eligible for prostate cancer screening each year under the UK National Screening Committee’s recommended criteria, when taking into account those men already known to genetic services through BRCA testing pathways.

The UK National Screening recommendation was for a targeted screening programme, involving prostate-specific antigen testing every two years, for men aged 45 to 61 years old who have a pathogenic, or able to cause disease, BRCA2 variant with a family history of breast, ovarian, pancreatic, or prostate cancer.

It is estimated that approximately 1,500 men in England will be eligible for the targeted prostate cancer screening programme. Based on similar programmes for people with genetic risk factors, uptake is expected to be high.

The intention is to use the National Inherited Cancer Predisposition Register (NICPR), to identify men with a known BRCA2 gene variant. Individuals are added to the NICPR as their gene variants are identified, and this is usually through cascade screening or as the result of having cancer and their tumour being genotyped. No estimate has been made of the additional numbers that may be identified using this method.

The Department is not undertaking analysis of the costs associated with identifying additional BRCA variant carriers. The committee did not recommend proactively identifying more men with a BRCA variant, as this would constitute a separate screening programme. The committee recommended that the best method of identifying men with a BRCA2 gene variant should be evaluated over time.