Although the American Cancer Society strongly recommends annual testing, starting with at the age 45 for blacks and whites with an immediate relative with prostate cancer, only one in five whites in their 40s had a PSA test in the past year, while rates in black men were really discouraging, a new study shows.

The PSA test measures a protein in the blood produced by prostate tissue. The test generally indicates the presence of a tumor but confirming it requires a biopsy. The measure has significantly increased the number of prostate cancer cases being diagnosed at very early stages, but there is no evidence to prove whether it translates into a reduction in death rate from the disease.

The study published in the Sept. issue of Cancer was based on a 2002 survey of 58,511 US men aged 40 and above. The findings show that 22.5 percent of all men in this category of age and 53.7 percent of older men report having a PSA test screen in the prior year. When it comes to black people, the study found that they are 2.4 times more likely than their white peers to undergo PSA screening. However, given their high risk of developing prostate cancer the researchers comment that the rate in black men running a PSA test – 33.6 percent – is disappointingly low.

“Our findings for black men are discouraging. We've been encouraging black men to get screened at age 40 or 45 for more than a decade, yet only one-third of these high-risk men reported being tested,” senior investigator Dr. Judd W. Moul from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, said.

Early this month the Preventive Services Task Force released a statement in which it updated its 2002 report saying that more evidence is needed to determine if men over 75 could benefit from screening. The reason behind this decision was that “most prostate cancers grow very slowly many men with prostate cancer die of something else before the prostate cancer causes a problem. Early detection, however, puts men at risk for unnecessary worry and side effects of treatments,” such as impotence, incontinence and bowel problems, the task force said.