Prostate blood test that tells if your life’s at risk

A blood test that identifies the deadliest forms of prostate cancer could save thousands of men from unnecessary treatment while ensuring rapid attention for those whose lives are at risk.

The new method of spotting tumour cells in the blood, discovered by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, is in its early stages.

But if initial findings based on tests on 80 samples from men with prostate cancer are confirmed in bigger studies, it could revolutionise treatment.

But if it stays in the prostate and does not spread, it is often best to offer no treatment, an approach known as ‘active surveillance’.

Yet until now doctors have had no reliable way of telling which men are most at risk.

Up to 30,000 have a localised, low-grade form of the disease that has yet to spread beyond the prostate.

But because there is no reliable way to tell how severe it is, about two thirds of them undergo gruelling treatment including radiotherapy, surgery or both.

This can have severe side effects including impotence, incontinence and bowel problems.

In future, testing for circulating prostate cancer cells could help doctors identify high-risk patients who may need radical intervention and spare those at low risk from unnecessary treatment.

The sensitive tests would pick up minute strands of DNA shed by a tumour as it grows. It is one of the first in a battery of ‘liquid biopsies’ that experts think will revolutionise the treatment of cancer.

This approach – called ‘precision medicine’ – enables doctors accurately to target cancers according to their genetic make-up, to closely monitor tumours as they mutate and evolve, and to switch drugs if cancer becomes resistant to a certain treatment.

The findings were presented at a conference of the National Cancer Research Institute in Liverpool.