Effects of joint screening for prostate, lung, colorectal, and ovarian cancer - results from a controlled trial

Sep 21, 2026

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Joint cancer screening is evaluated as a strategy to reduce overall cancer burden when single-site screening may miss untargeted cancers. A controlled trial assesses gender-specific effects on PLCO cancer incidence and mortality, all-neoplasms mortality, and all-cause mortality, using meta-analyses based on gender-specific screening effects. A 10-year combined PLCO risk cutoff reclassifies participants into low- and high-risk subgroups, and analyses evaluate risk-group and screening-compliance differences.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Introduction

TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 29 April 2024 DOI 10.3389/fonc.2024.1322044 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Philip Rosenberg, National Cancer Institute (NIH), United States REVIEWED BY Mehul Jani, University Hospitals of Cleveland, United States Gregory R. Hart, Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM), United States *CORRESPONDENCE Fengju Song [songfengju@163.com](songfengju@163.com)[ ](songfengju@163.com)Yubei Huang [yubei_huang@163.com](yubei_huang@163.com) †These authors have contributed equally to this work and share ﬁrst authorship ‡These authors have contributed equally to this work RECEIVED 02 November 2023 ACCEPTED 09 April 2024 PUBLISHED 29 April 2024 CITATION Fan Z, Zhang Y, Yao Q, Liu X, Duan H, Liu Y, Sheng C, Lyu Z, Yang L, Song F, Huang Y and Song F (2024) Effects of joint screening for prostate, lung, colorectal, and ovarian cancer – results from a controlled trial. Front. Oncol. 14:1322044 . doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1322044 COPYRIGHT © 2024 Fan, Zhang, Yao, Liu, Duan, Liu, Sheng, Lyu, Yang, Song, Huang and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Effects of joint screening for prostate, lung, colorectal, and ovarian cancer – results from a controlled trial Zeyu Fan 1†, Yu Zhang 1†, Qiaoling Yao 1, Xiaomin Liu 1, Hongyuan Duan 1, Ya Liu 1, Chao Sheng 1, Zhangyan Lyu 1, Lei Yang 2, Fangfang Song 1, Yubei Huang 1*‡ and Fengju Song 1*‡ 1 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Key Laboratory of Molecular Cancer Epidemiology, Tianjin, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China, 2 Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Translational Research (Ministry of Education), Beijing Ofﬁce for Cancer Prevention and Control, Peking University Cancer Hospital & Institute, Beijing, China Background: Although screening is widely used to reduce cancer burden, untargeted cancers are frequently missed after single cancer screening. Joint cancer screening is presumed as a more effective strategy to reduce overall cancer burden. Methods: Gender-speciﬁc screening effects on PLCO cancer incidence, PLCO cancer mortality, all-neoplasms mortality and all-cause mortality were evaluated, and meta-analyses based on gender-speciﬁc screening effects were conducted to achieve the pooled effects. The cut-off value of time-dependent receiveroperating-characteristic curve of 10-year combined PLCO cancer risk was used to reclassify participants into low- and high-risk subgroups. Further analyses were conducted to investigate screening effects stratiﬁed by risk groups and screening compliance. Results: After a median follow-up of 10 .48 years for incidence and 16 . 85 years for mortality, a total of 5,506 PLCO cancer cases, 1,845 PLCO cancer deaths, 3,970 all-neoplasms deaths, and 14,221 all-cause deaths were documented in the screening arm, while 6,261, 2,417, 5,091, and 18,516 outcome-speciﬁc events in the control arm. Joint cancer screening did not signiﬁcantly reduce PLCO cancer incidence, but signiﬁcantly reduced male-speciﬁc PLCO cancer mortality (hazard ratio and 95% conﬁdence intervals [HR(95%CIs)]: 0.88(0.82, 0.95)) and pooled mortality [0 . 89(0 . 84, 0 . 95)] . More importantly, joint cancer screening signiﬁcantly reduced both gender-speciﬁc all-neoplasm mortality [0.91(0.86, 0.96) for males, 0. 91(0 . 85, 0 . 98) for females, and 0 . 91(0 . 87, 0 . 95) for meta-analyses] and allcause mortality [0.90(0.88, 0.93) for male, 0.88(0.85, 0.92) for female, and 0.89 (0 . 87, 0 . 91) for m

FAQs

What is the goal of the joint cancer screening strategy evaluated in this trial?

To reduce overall cancer burden by addressing cancers that may be missed after single cancer screening, using joint screening across multiple sites.

How were the screening effects assessed in the study?

The study evaluated gender-specific screening effects on PLCO incidence and mortality, all-neoplasms mortality, and all-cause mortality, with pooled meta-analyses. It also reclassified participants into low- and high-risk subgroups using a 10-year combined PLCO risk cutoff and performed analyses by risk group and screening compliance.

What main outcome differences were reported for joint screening versus control?

Joint screening did not significantly reduce PLCO cancer incidence, but it significantly reduced male-specific PLCO cancer mortality. It also significantly reduced both gender-specific all-neoplasms mortality and all-cause mortality, with further results showing compliance-related risk changes.

Sep 21, 2026

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