Researchers have been able to identify a genetic mutation that can help in predicting which men will have aggressive prostate cancer, and they have now stressed that it can help doctors easily choose who needs treatment and who does not.

The research revealed that men who have this particular genetic change were 26% more at risk of developing an aggressive cancer form.

"A single variant with a moderate effect such as this is unlikely to be sufficient on its own at predicting risk. But its identification is significant because it indicates that variants predisposing men to aggressive disease exist in the genome", said lead researcher Jianfeng Xu of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina.

For the sake of study, researchers analyzed genetic information collected from 4,849 men with aggressive prostate cancer, and 12,205 men who had slowly progressing forms of the disease.

The DNA mutation discovered is known as rs4054823.

Details of the study have been published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.