Urologist from Stanford University School of Medicine found that men with azoospermia are at a higher risk of developing cancer than the general public.
Azoospermia is a disorder where men are not able to produce sperm in their semen, which leads to infertility. Infertility is surprisingly common in the United States, revealed urologists from the Stanford University School of Medicine in a press release. They stated that 4 million men in the United States, which accounts for 15 percent of the male population in the country, are infertile and among these 4 million approximately 600,000 suffer from azoospermia . One percent of these men are of reproductive age.
Previous studies have linked azoospermia to testicular cancer but this new study finds that this disorder can increase the risk of cancer beyond testicular cancer. The research studied 2,238 infertile men with the average age of 35.7 years who underwent a semen analysis at a Baylor andrology clinic to determine the cause of their infertility. 451 men were found to have azoospermia. Participants of the study were observed for an average of 6.7 years to see which of them were diagnosed with any form of cancer during that period.
Researchers found that a total of 29 of the 2,238 infertile men developed cancer over a 5.8-year average period from their semen analysis to their cancer diagnosis, which was way above the expected 16.7 cases, on an age-adjusted basis, for the male Texas population in general.
This led researchers to conclude that infertile men were three times more likely to develop cancer than the general male public but men without azoospermia were only 1.4 times at a higher risk of developing cancer. In the study, scientists were also able to rule out the possibility that azoospermia caused by an undiagnosed cancer had affected their statistics.
