Blood test 'is best way to detect prostate cancer'

A new blood test for prostate cancer could prove more reliable than current screening methods, doctors said today.

Initial trials of the new test have found it can detect the cancer in its early stages and appears to be more reliable than the current test, which has been found to wrongly give some men the all-clear.

Now the Early Prostate Cancer Antigen (EPCA) test could offer a more reliable alternative.

One in 14 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some stage in their lives and there are 30,100 new cases each year. Those over 50 are most at risk and about 10,000 men die annually from the disease.

A study in the journal Cancer Research shows the EPCA test is highly sensitive and does not confuse other cancers or prostate conditions as the current Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test can do.

Professor Robert H Getzenberg, director of research at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins in America, said the EPCA could reduce the number of examinationsand tests men have to go through. He said: "This new blood test, when coupled with PSA screening, may help reduce the number of both unnecessary biopsies and undetected prostate tumours.

"In addition to being highly sensitive to prostate cancer the EPCA test is also very specific to it, meaning that other cancers and benign prostate conditions are not detected, thus boosting doctors' confidence that a positive EPCA test is really a sign of prostate cancer."

Professor Getzenberg and his colleagues developed a simple test that would detect early prostate cancer antigen in the blood and then measured the EPCA levels in 46 patients, including those with prostate cancer, other cancers and other prostate conditions.

Dr Chris Hiley, Prostate Cancer Charity Head of Policy and Research, said the results were encouraging.