According to a new study, men who underwent vasectomy increased their risk of deadly prostate cancer.
Scientists from Harvard University found that vasectomy increases the risk of prostate cancer by 10 percent. They looked into the health of 50,000 males between 40 and 75 years old at the commencement of the study between 1986 and 2010. One out of four men in the research had a vasectomy. The results showed 6,023 prostate cancer cases and 811 fatal ones.
Study author and associate professor of epidemiology Lorelei Mucci from Harvard School of Public Health said that those who have a vasectomy prior to turning 38 were particularly affected strongly. A sharp rise in the risk of the strongest prostate cancer was found in them although this form of disease is still rare.
"We saw that in men who had a vasectomy earlier in life there was a greater risk of developing advanced or lethal forms of the disease. This may be because of the timings and the impact on the prostate," Mucci said.
Most men with the cancer do not suffer from it but treatment options such as radiotherapy and surgery can cause severe side effects including incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Young men who had vasectomy had the highest dangers of the disease but absolute risk of deadly prostate cancer was only at 16 per 1,000 men.
Experts said the study is "extremely important" and men should be informed of the risks of vasectomy before they decide about the contraception. Those who underwent vasectomy increased their risk of being diagnosed with the advanced form of prostate cancer by 20 percent while their risk of death was increased by 19 percent. However, the scientists made it clear that they only presented a statistical connection between vasectomy and prostate cancer but do not claim that the operation is the direct cause of the disease. It was still unclear why the operation would cause cancer but it could be the protein change in semen. About one in six males in the UK undergo vasectomies.
