Charities said a new generation of blood tests for prostate cancer are showing “huge potential” in diagnosis and treatment of the disease, raising hopes that far more cases can be spotted early.

Earlier this month a pilot study of 147 men that combined blood tests with PSA tests, achieved accuracy rates of 94 per cent.

But the larger study suggests one standalone blood test could be enough to achieve highly accurate results.

Experts said larger trials were needed to determine how effective it could be.

It comes as the UK National Screening Committee considers whether screening could be routinely offered to men aged 50 and over.

Currently the checks are only available on request, amid concern about the reliability of such systems.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among British men, with 52,000 diagnoses a year.

‘Men are still being diagnosed too late’

Simon Grieveson, assistant director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “The detection of cancer cells in the blood has shown huge potential in recent years, and Prostate Cancer UK and Movember are jointly funding research into whether this could also help decide the best treatment for men with cancer still localised to the prostate.

“These results show great promise and suggest that it may be possible to use this test to detect the cancer in the first place. However, we now need to see this tested in far greater numbers of men before we can determine just how effective it could be.

“Prostate cancer is very treatable if caught early, but too many men are still being diagnosed too late, when their prostate cancer is incurable – which is why we so urgently need a screening programme. Prostate Cancer UK is committed to driving the research and evidence needed to make this happen, which would save thousands of men’s lives.”

Researchers said the test called the Trublood Prostate developed by Datar Cancer Genetics had a high detection capability across all stages of the cancer, with the strongest capability shown in the most aggressive types of disease.

Dr Nelofer Syed, a research lecturer at Imperial College London and co-author of the study, said: “The technology can provide for accurate triaging of suspected cases and more effective detection of prostate cancer; based on its high detection sensitivity as well as its potential to minimise the number of avoidable investigations (such as a biopsy) in men without an underlying prostate cancer.”

Dr Vineet Datta, executive director of Datar Cancer Genetics, said: “We are excited to be able to offer the ground-breaking technologies to patients in the United Kingdom and beyond.

“The group continues to innovate and push the boundaries when it comes to cancer screening and diagnostics.”