Male infertility and prostate cancer risk

Despite the pathogenesis of prostate cancer is unclear, experimental evidence implicates androgens as playing an important role.

Men developing infertility frequently suffer from some degree of hypogonadism and may hence be hypothesized to be at lower risk of developing prostate cancer than fertile men. A recent study at Malmö University Hospital, Sweden, aimed to test this hypothesis, conducting a case-control study nested within “the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study” cohort in Sweden. Researchers invited 661 prostate cancer cases and 661 age-matched controls to participate.

Study concluded that enduring male infertility is associated with a reduced prostate cancer risk, thus corroborating the theory that normal testicular function, and hence most probably sufficient steroidogenesis, is an important contributing factor to the later development of prostate cancer