The Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer is over-diagnosing, unnecessarily increasing the risk of premature death for many (from the ensuing operation), and needlessly causing worry for many others in the 60-84 age bracket. So claim Dr Ruth Etzioni and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Eric Feuer and colleagues at Bethesda, Maryland's National Cancer Institute (US).

'Overdiagnosis' here is specifically defined as "detecting prostate cancers that would never otherwise have been detected in the patient's lifetime" (because he would die of another cause - including old age - before it became sufficiently advanced to be 'clinical'). The researchers estimated 29% over-diagnosis in white men and 44% over-diagnosis in black men.