Selected Articles from This Issue

New technologies enabling multi-cancer early detection (MCED) may make “universal cancer screening” possible. To examine this possibility, Hubbell and colleagues modeled the results of an MCED test applied to a population representative of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program. The model found the potential to intercep. 2 in 5 cancers before usual care, reducing late stage incidence by half, with the potential to reduce 1 in 4 cancer deaths due to this stage shift. This suggests that MCED tests added to usual care have the potential to substantially reduce overall cancer mortality.

There is an ongoing debate regarding concomitant testing of cytology and HPV (co-testing) in comparison to stand-alone HPV testing for optimal screening of cervical cancer and its precursors. Liang and colleagues used population-based screening data from the German MARZY study to compare the accuracy of co-testing with stand-alone HPV testing using different cytology and HPV tests. Stand-alone HPV testing performed similarly to co-testing, with the latter strategy generating more false positive results and colposcopy referrals. Implementation of co-testing as a screening strategy translates to minor gains in screening detection at the cost of more harms than stand-alone HPV testing.

Although the associations between obesity and risk of pancreatic cancer have been previously suggested, it is questionable whether this association is caused by metabolically unhealthy phenotype. Using the Korean National Health Insurance Service–Health Screening Cohort (NHIS-HEALS), this study by Chung and colleagues showed that the metabolically unhealthy normal weight (MUNW) and metabolically unhealthy obese (MUO) phenotypes had elevated risks of pancreatic cancer but the metabolically healthy obese (MHO) phenotyp. did not, compared to the metabolically healthy normal weight (MHNW) phenotype. Results suggest that metabolically unhealthy phenotype might represent a potential risk factor for pancreatic cancer occurrence independently of obesity.

Studies reported that regular aspirin use associates with a reduced risk of fatal prostate cancer. Few included African American men. To close this knowledge gap, Tang and colleagues investigated the relationship of aspirin use with prostate cancer among African American men in the Southern Community Cohort Study, which prospectively recruited participants of predominately low-income backgrounds. The investigation showed that aspirin use was tentatively associated with a reduced prostate cancer mortality - but not with disease risk. The observation suggests that aspirin use should be further evaluated as an opportunity to decrease lethal prostate cancer in African American men.