MONDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Immigrants to Denmark have rates of testicular cancer similar to that of their countries of origin, while their Danish-born children have rates similar to that of native-born Danes, researchers report in the Jan. 2 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Charlotte Myrup, M.D., from the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues examined the risk of testicular cancer among 2.1 million men in Denmark based on immigration history. The men had been born after 1930 and lived in Denmark between 1968 and 2003.
The researchers found that there were a total of 4,216 cases of testicular cancer, with 166 cases among 344,444 first-generation immigrants and 13 cases among 56,189 second-generation immigrants. Compared with men born in Denmark of parents born in Denmark, the rate ratios were 0.37 for first-generation immigrants and 0.88 for second-generation immigrants. For first-generation immigrants, the rate reflected that of their country of origin and not age or duration of stay in Denmark.
"The testicular cancer risk in first-generation immigrants was lower than that in native-born Danes and reflected that in the countries of origin, whereas the risk in second-generation immigrants was similar to that in natives of Denmark," Myrup and colleagues conclude. "Together these findings argue for a substantial influence of environmental factors limited to the period early in life, most probably to the period in utero."
Abstract
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