London, March 02: Scientists in the UK unveiled the first reliable test for diagnosing early prostate cancer, Sky News reported today.
The urine test is so accurate that it could be used to screen all older men for the disease.
Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer, killing more than 10,000 men in the UK every year.
Scientists at the University of Surrey, in southeastern England, identified a protein called EN-2, which is only produced by prostate cancer cells. Studies showed that a test for the protein detects 60-70 per cent of cancers, and the false positive rate – men who are wrongly diagnosed with cancer – is just four per cent.
On both counts, the new test is vastly superior to the existing PSA blood test, which detects fewer than 40 per cent of cancers and has a false positive rate of over 50 per cent.
“I think the lack of false positives is clearly very, very encouraging,” said Professor Hardev Pandha, who led the research. “The technology that underlies the test is so simple that actually having a desktop apparatus in a [doctor’s office] would be very, very straightforward. It’s very exciting.”
Dr Richard Morgan, who helped develop the test, added that it was a significant step forward in detecting the most common male cancer.
“In conjunction with other tests and clinical signs of cancer, I think it will have a very important part to play in diagnosis and in monitoring the disease,” he said.
Their research was included in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
——–Agencies