SUPPORT groups have welcomed news of a new drug to treat aggressive prostate cancer as the best news in 50 years.

Initial test suggest the new drug, abiraterone, shrink tumours in 80 per cent of patients with the more aggressive form of the cancer.

British researchers pioneering the drug are now hopeful it may be able to save many of the thousands who die every year from prostate cancer.

It is hoped the drug will be in common use by 2011, a development welcomed by support groups across Essex.

Malcolm Perry, chairman of the Prostate Cancer Support Association Anglia Branch, which covers south Essex, said: “Anything to bring about a cure for prostate cancer and reduce the amount of deaths is good.

“It is the best news I have heard for 50 years. It seems like something from heaven.

“This gives hope for all the men who have it and all those who have overcome it.”

Mr Perry urged any man who has a urinary problem to visit a doctor as soon as possible to be checked out.

He added: “It might not be cancer, but it needs to be checked.”

Abiraterone was discovered by researchers at the Royal Marsden Hospital in South West London.

Researcher Dr Johann de Bono said patients at the hospital undergoing the trial had been able to control the disease with just four pills a day.

There were very few side effects.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among British men and the second most lethal form of cancer overall, after lung cancer.

About 35,000 people a year are diagnosed with it and as many as 12,000 a year die.

There are two types, with the most aggressive causing death within 18 months.

The drug will now be tested on 1,200 patients internationally before it can be used more widely.