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From: "Havelock Vetinari" <>
Subject: [DNA] Fatherhood Tied to Higher Prostate Cancer Risk
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 10:25:01 -0500


http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080107/fatherhood-tied-to-higher-prostate-cancer-risk.htm

MONDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Men who father children may be at
higher risk of prostate cancer compared to those who forego the life
experience, a Danish study suggests.

The large-scale study looked at all men born in Denmark between 1935
and 1988. It found that childless men had a 17 percent lower incidence
of prostate cancer than fathers did.

The reasons why remain unclear.

"It is not possible from the current data to point out what factors
associated with childlessness, whether biologic, environmental, social
or behavioral, were responsible for the observed reduction in prostate
cancer risk," wrote researchers at the Statens Serum Institut, in
Copenhagen.

The study is published in the Jan. 7 online edition of Cancer, and
will appear in the journal's Feb. 15 print edition.

The findings echo those of a prior Scandinavian study, published in
2005, which looked at more than 48,800 cases of prostate cancer. That
report also found a 17 percent lower incidence of prostate cancer
among childless men.

In neither of the two studies did the gender of the children fathered
affect the man's risk of prostate cancer. However, one large-scale
study conducted several years ago in Israel found that the malignancy
was 40 percent more common among men with no sons.

Dr. Susan Harlap, now a professor of epidemiology at New York
University, led that Israeli study. She said the differing results
reflect the complex factors, genetic and otherwise, that underlie
prostate cancer risk throughout the world.

"The incidence of prostate cancer is different in Israeli Jews than in
northwestern Europeans," Harlap said. "It may be a different disease,
and there may be a different set of causes. We do know there are
genetic causes of prostate cancer, and there could be different sets
of genes in Israeli Jews than in northwestern Europeans."

A relationship between prostate cancer risk and having no sons would
point to a mutation in the Y chromosome, which determines the male sex
of a child. But there are complexities to such a relationship, Harlap
noted.

"If the effect is due to Y chromosomes, they are quite specific to
ethnic groups," she said. "Israeli Jews are different from Danes and
Swedes."

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