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Predictive genetic tool developed to better inform men whether and when to take PSA blood test.

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Prostate cancer detection currently relies on the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening blood test, which has been proven to reduce deaths from the disease. However, PSA testing is a poor screening tool because it can also produce false positive results and encourages over-detection of non-aggressive, slow-growing tumors.

An international team has now developed a genetic tool that has been proven to be able to predict the age of onset of aggressive prostate cancer, a disease that kills more than 26,000 American men annually.

The new tool may potentially be used to guide decisions about who to screen for prostate cancer and at what age.

Find out more (University of Oxford website)