Biden skipped prostate blood test for 11 years before diagnosis
Joe Biden had not had a blood test for prostate cancer for 11 years, a spokesman for the former US president said on Tuesday.
Mr Biden had never been diagnosed with cancer before last week, his spokesman insisted after Donald Trump fuelled claims of a cover-up by saying that he was 'surprised' the public was not told about the cancer earlier.
The former president's office announced on Sunday that the 82 year-old had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, a few days after a nodule was found on the gland.
'President Biden's last known PSA was in 2014,' a spokesman for Mr Biden said in a statement. 'Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer.'
Mr Trump and his allies raised questions about when his predecessor and his doctors knew about the cancer, given its advanced nature and the intensive medical scrutiny of US presidents.
Some doctors have raised questions about how his disease could have reached an advanced stage and spread to the bone when he was subject to annual physical exams during his time in the White House.
Prof Karl Sikora told The Telegraph that Mr Biden's apparently late diagnosis could have been a 'cover-up by his doctors', but was more likely to be a 'rapid-growing cancer'.
The former president's cancer is grade nine on the Gleason scale, marking it as 'aggressive', which urologist Dr David Shusterman said was 'unheard of' for a patient receiving annual check-ups.
Other medical experts said that the late identification of an advanced cancer would not be unheard of, even for a former president receiving top-of-the-line medical care.
Prostate cancer, the most common among men, can be caught in its early stages using blood tests that measure for a protein called prostate-specific antigen, or PSA.
However, annual PSA screening after the age of 70 is not universally recommended.
The US Preventive Services Task Force advises against it, reasoning that the risk of false positives and the harms from biopsies and treatment outweigh the benefits.
Mr Biden would have been aged between 71 and 72 at the age of the 2014 test.
His office did not say whether the former president had separately been given prostate exams.
Questions over Mr Biden's health dogged him throughout his curtailed re-election campaign and have been renewed in recent weeks ahead of the release of a book detailing what it calls his declining physical condition.
The ex-president expressed gratitude on Monday for an outpouring of 'love and support' following his cancer diagnosis.
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