A global team of scientists has discovered 23 new genetic variants that are associated with an elevated risk of developing prostate cancer.

The analysis – possibly the largest of its kind – has unveiled previously hidden mutations in men from a wide array of ethnicities of European, Latino and Asian ancestry.

It’s estimated that 233,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed in 2014 will be prostate cancer, comprising of 14 percent of all new cancer cases.

Alan Partin, M.D., Ph.D., Brady Urological Institute director, and William B. Isaacs, Ph.D., a genetic scientist at the Brady Urological Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, helped lead the study.

Blood and tissue samples of 43,303 prostate cancer patients and 43,737 men without prostate cancer were analyzed. The researchers then compared the genomes of cancer patients to those without cancer, and subsequently found 23 new single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that they have linked to prostate cancer. These variants account for one-third of the inherited risk of developing the disease.

“Inheriting any single one of these genetic variants has only a small effect of prostate cancer risk. However, a subset of men will inherit many of these variants, putting them at substantially increase risk for the disease, from three to six times the population average. Men with these risk levels may benefit from disease screening at earlier ages,” said Partin in a statement.

It’s already recommended that men be screened for prostate cancer starting in their 40s or 50s, but those with a family history of prostate cancer should be screened at an earlier age.

The findings of the study are published online in Nature Genetics.