TUESDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Childless men have a moderately lower risk of developing prostate cancer compared with fathers, but among fathers, having more children is linked to a lower prostate cancer risk, according to the results of a study published online Jan. 7 in advance of publication in the journal Cancer.
Kristian T. Jorgensen, from Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues examined whether fatherhood status affects prostate cancer risk using data from 3,400 Danish men who developed prostate cancer between 1968 and 2003.
The researchers found that childless men had a lower risk of prostate cancer compared with fathers (rate ratio 0.84), regardless of the sex of the offspring. Among fathers, having more children significantly decreased the risk of prostate cancer in a linear fashion, regardless of the sex of the offspring.
"Our national cohort study corroborates the view that men without children constitute a group that is at a moderately reduced risk of prostate cancer," Jorgensen and colleagues conclude. "Among men with children, there appears to be a linear decline in prostate cancer risk with increasing number of children that is independent of the sex of the offspring."
Abstract
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