Fathers Get 16% More Prostate Cancer
June 17th, 2008 Posted in prostate cancer risksWhen a man fathers his first child, his lifetime risk of prostate cancer goes up 16%.
Nobody has any idea why this might be so, but the finding, based on 51.6 million man-years of data, is as certain as any statistical fact can be.
Here’s another piece of the puzzle: After a man fathers a second child, each new child cuts his prostate cancer risk by 5%.
Why these things might happen is a mystery even to the researchers who discovered the disturbing factoids. But facts they are, says Morten Frisch, MD, PhD, DSc, senior investigator at the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.