The PSA test is the standard measure of prostate cancer, but is fraught with problems and not always accurate. But German researchers have found a urine test that tracks RNA molecules linked to cancer may offer a better, more accurate way to detect the disease.

This study, presented at the European Association of Urology Congress (EAU16) in Munich this week, was conducted by the University of Leipzig and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology, Medical News Today reports.

"Our work on RNAs [ribonucleic acid] is allowing us to design a completely new kind of prostate cancer test," said lead researcher Friedemann Horn.

Current biomarker tests for prostate cancer measure levels of PSA (prostate-specific antigen) and PCA3 (prostate cancer gene 3), but are notoriously inaccurate and can either miss many cancers or produce false positives that lead to unnecessarily aggressive treatments.

The German researchers have identified a series of non-coding RNA molecules that could potentially be combined into a single urine test to detect prostate cancer.

Such a test holds promise for offering greater sensitivity and specificity than the current biomarker tests and thus make population screening much more viable.

"Given that our initial results show a high specificity for prostate cancer in urine tests, the prospects are good that we will be able to translate this into a better test for prostate cancer," Wirth said.

"We have several good candidate biomarkers, however we are aiming to design a test which utilizes a combination of biomarkers. This will give significantly better specificity than existing tests."

Other than skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men, striking about one in every seven.