Cervical screening up to age 69 may prevent cervical cancer in older women

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Public Library of Science
Cervical screening up to age 69 may prevent cervical cancer in older women A study published this week in PLOS Medicine suggests that screening women for cervical cancer beyond age 50 clearly saves lives, and also that there are benefits for women with normal (negative) screening results to continue screening up to the age of 69 years.

Peter Sasieni and colleagues, from Queen Mary University of London, UK, examined the link between screening women aged 50 to 64 for cervical cancer and cervical cancer diagnosed at ages 65 to 83. Their study included all 65 to 83-year old women in England and Wales diagnosed with cervical cancer between 2007 and 2012, a total of 1,341 women.

Women who had not been screened past age 50 had a 6 fold higher risk of being diagnosed with cervical cancer than those with adequate negative screening history at ages 50-64— 49 versus 8 cancers per 10,000 women over a period of 20 years. Women who had been screened regularly but had had a positive (abnormal) screening result between 50 and 64 had a risk of 86 per 10,000 women over 20 years.

Although these findings may not be generalizable to other settings and cervical screening methods are changing (with the availability of testing for Human Papilloma Virus), they suggest that cervical screening in women aged 50󈞬 y has a substantial impact on cervical cancer rates not only at age 50󈞬 y, but for many years thereafter.

The authors say: "Screening up to age 65 years greatly reduces the risk of cervical cancer in the following decade, but the protection weakens with time and is substantially less 15 y after the last screen. In the light of increasing life expectancy, it would seem inappropriate for countries that currently stop screening between the ages 60 and 69 years to consider reducing the age at which screening ceases."

In an accompanying Perspective, Anne Rositch, from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, USA, and colleagues say: "Incorporating the new data on older women, such as those… presented by Sasieni and colleagues, into the evaluation of whether to extend screening beyond age 65 for women with adequate negative screening will provide much needed insight into whether current guidelines are sufficient for the population now and in the future." ### Research Article

Funding: This work was supported by Cancer Research UK [C8162/10406 and C8162/12537]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: Authors declare no support from any organisation for the submitted work, no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous 3 years, and no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Citation: Castañón A, Landy R, Cuzick J, Sasieni P (2014) Cervical Screening at Age 50󈞬 Years and the Risk of Cervical Cancer at Age 65 Years and Older: Population-Based Case Control Study. PLoS Med 11(1): e1001585. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001585

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001585

Contact:

Charli Scouller
PR Manager
Queen Mary University of London
+44(0) 20 7882 7943
c.scouller@qmul.ac.uk

Perspective Article

Funding: This work was supported by the Career Development Award for Bridging Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (K12 HD043489-12). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Rositch AF, Silver MI, Gravitt PE (2014) Cervical Cancer Screening in Older Women: New Evidence and Knowledge Gaps. PLoS Med 11(1): e1001586. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001586

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001586

Contact:

Anne Rositch
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
UNITED STATES
9197241737
arositch@jhsph.edu; arositch@epi.umaryland.edu