Blood test could reveal prostate cancer risk more than a decade before diagnosis

Published on 27 October 2026 - 7:28 GMT+1

Distinctive proteins in men’s blood can signal a higher risk of prostate cancer more than 15 years before diagnosis, Oxford researchers have found.

“Finding proteins linked to known prostate cancer driver genes in blood collected years before diagnosis gives us new insights into the earliest stages of the disease,” said Karl Smith-Byrne, corresponding author of the study at Oxford.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the European Union and second worldwide, after lung cancer. About 330,000 new cases are diagnosed every year and about 75,000 men die of the disease annually, in the EU alone.

Researchers at Oxford University analysed blood samples collected between 1992 and 2000 from more than 2,500 men. They compared baseline samples from 982 men who went on to develop prostate cancer with those from 1,573 men who did not.

The team measured more than 6,000 different proteins in each participant’s blood plasma. Because the samples were taken years before any diagnosis, sometimes more than 15 years, the researchers could look for early chemical warning signs — changes in proteins.

Some proteins were linked to a higher overall risk of prostate cancer, while others were associated specifically with aggressive or fast-growing forms of the disease. At the same time, men with higher levels of certain immune-system proteins, like GZMK and ANXA2, showed a lower long-term risk of prostate cancer, according to the study, published in the journal European Urology

“Many prostate cancers grow slowly and may never cause harm, while others are aggressive and can be life-threatening,” said Zhe Huang, first author of the study and a postdoctoral epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health.

“Ultimately, we hope this will help us understand the biology of aggressive prostate cancer and identify markers that could improve how we assess risk in the future,” Huang said.

The findings are not yet a screening test and need further validation, the researchers noted.

“Together with existing and future genetic evidence, these findings may help us identify biological pathways that could be targeted to prevent aggressive prostate cancer”, said Smith-Byrne.