A blood test can detect prostate cancer with more than 90 per cent accuracy, a study reveals.

But this is inaccurate, meaning thousands of men are wrongly told they may have prostate cancer and can be sent for a painful biopsy or MRI scan unnecessarily.

It looks for changes in immune cells within the blood, which flag up changes in gene activity seen in the early stages of cancer.

The new test still looks for PSA, but incorporates a method called EpiSwitch to look for changes in the immune cells caused by cancer-linked alterations in five genes.

It looks for changes in immune cells within the blood, which flag up changes in gene activity seen in the early stages of cancer

The combined check, called a PSE test, was 94 per cent accurate for negative results.