Polygenic risk scores to stratify cancer screening should predict mortality not incidence.

ABSTRACT: Population-based cancer screening programs such as mammography or colonscopy generally directed at all healthy individuals in a given age stratum. It has recently been proposed that cancer screening could be restricted to a high-risk subgroup based on polygenic risk scores (PRSs) using panels of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These PRSs were, however, generated to predict cancer incidence rather than cancer mortality and will not necessarily address overdiagnosis, a major problem associated with cancer screening programs. We develop a simple net-benefit framework for evaluating screening approaches that incorporates overdiagnosis. We use this methodology to demonstrate that if a PRS does not differentially discriminate between incident and lethal cancer, restricting screening to a

SUBMITTER: Vickers AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9151796 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature