A simple at-home spit test may be more accurate at detecting prostate cancer than the current prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, new NIHR-funded research suggests.
This new method could better identify the future risk of cancer for some men. The BARCODE 1 study calculated the risk of prostate cancer from DNA extracted from saliva. This is called a polygenic risk score (PRS).
The study was partly funded by the NIHR Royal Marsden Biomedical Research Centre. It was supported by NIHR Research Delivery Network and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For men with the highest risk score, the study found this to be a better tool than the current prostate cancer risk test. This is a blood test which measures levels of a protein called prostate-specific antigen (PSA). PSA levels can be elevated in men with prostate cancer.
The current blood test is used to identify men who are at higher risk of prostate cancer due to their age or ethnicity, or men presenting with symptoms. Men with a high PSA result will be sent for further tests to detect cancer.
However, the PSA test falsely indicates prostate cancer in men 3 out of 4 times and detects cancers which grow so slowly they are unlikely to ever be life-threatening. This means that some men may undergo unnecessary MRI scans, invasive biopsies and treatments.
