14 DAY TRIAL // In a world contaminated with so many hormone mimicking chemicals, no wonder that sexual function in both men and women is affected. Stress is another main factor proved to be added to the increasing rates of couple sterility in the agitated western life style. And as if not being able to procreated was not enough, another blow given by a recent research: sterile men have an increased risk of experiencing testicular cancer. The connection is not quite new, but further strengthens the link between infertility and testicular cancer.
This study published in the Fertility and Sterility journal was aimed to determine rates of testicular cancer in infertile men using a large array of study methodology. The research was made on a database of more than 51,000 couples confirmed for infertility from 1965 to 1995 in 15 California infertility centers.
Medical history and records of the men in the couples were reviewed and connected to the California Cancer Registry, the cumulative Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) registry for the State of California. The study excluded cancer cases already existent when the analysis had started.
The rates of testicular cancer in this research pool were compared to the same age men from the overall Californian population. Men from sterile couples presented a 60% increased risk of developing testicular cancer compared to men from non-sterile couples (standardized incidence ratio I .6 95% confidence interval I .2 to 2.2), and the risk was found to have relatively the same value across all age categories. The most common type of testicular cancer was seminoma, which produces bulky masses that can be up to 10 times the size of a normal testis and requires orchiectomy (testicle removal) in almost all cases.
"Men with a history of infertility have a markedly increased risk of subsequently developing testicular cancer," wrote the authors.