Testicular cancer linked to infertility

Men who are undergoing treatment for infertility are 20 times more likely than other men to be diagnosed with testicular cancer, a new study shows.

The finding underscores the importance of urological screening for any man with infertility, Dr Marc Goldstein said, especially because this evaluation is often not a part of infertility treatment.

Male infertility was frequently handled by reproductive endocrinologists, and "a lot of these men are being funnelled straight to in vitro fertilisation," said Dr Goldstein, of the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Centre.

There was evidence that infertility and testicular cancer had a common origin in many cases, beyond the well-known risk associated with having a history of undescended testes, also known as cryptorchidism, Dr Goldstein and his team wrote in the Journal of Urology.

The researchers reviewed charts from 3800 men treated over a 10-year period. Ten cases of testicular cancer were identified.

Infertile men had a 22.6-times higher risk of testicular cancer compared with men of similar age in the general population.

Two of the men had a history of cryptorchidism. When they were excluded from the analysis, the remaining men still had an 18.3-times higher risk of the disease.

- REUTERS