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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.