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Researchers have detailed cancer risk patterns in families of men who produce little or no sperm in a new study using genetic sequencing.
They found that in families with men producing no sperm (azoospermic), the risk of developing bone and joint cancer increased by 156 percent, while the risk of developing cancer of the lymph, soft tissue and thyroid increased by 60 percent, 56 percent respectively. . percent and 54 percent respectively.
The researchers, led by researchers at the University of Utah, US, also found that families with severely oligozoospermic men – those with sperm counts less than 1.5 million per milliliter of semen – had a 143 per cent increased risk of bone and joint disease. Cancer and the risk of developing testicular cancer increased by 134 percent.
“Our study has identified several unique patterns of cancer risk in families of men with poor fertility. When family members share cancer risk patterns, it turns out that they have similar genetic, environmental or health behavior patterns. Genetic and environmental risks may also work together to increase cancer risk,” said Jomi Ramsay, assistant professor at the University of Utah and lead author of the study published in the journal Human Reproduction.
The researchers said the findings could improve their understanding of the biological mechanisms involved in both cancer and infertility.
This, he said, would enable doctors to more accurately predict cancer risk for men with reduced fertility and their families and improve the counseling they provide.
For the study, researchers analyzed semen from 786 men attending fertility clinics in the US state of Utah between 1996 and 2017. They matched these men with information from 5674 fertile men (those who have had at least one child) in the general population. ,
The team also used the Utah Population Database and the Utah Cancer Registry to collect health data on the men’s relatives and cancer diagnoses, respectively.
The researchers simultaneously assessed the risk of multiple types of cancers in each family and then performed a cluster analysis – a data analysis technique – to identify groups of families with similar patterns of risk for multiple cancers.
While previous research has shown that male infertility is associated with an increased risk of cancer in them and their families, the results have been inconsistent, the researchers said, with the risks of different types of cancer varying significantly between family groups and types of infertility. Are. ,
“This is the first study to describe these multicancer patterns in families of less fertile men,” Ramsay said.
The researchers acknowledged that limitations of the study included the men’s other health conditions, a lack of information about their lifestyle risk factors (smoking and BMI), and exposure to environmental risk factors among less fertile men.
They also noted that the men studied were those seen in a fertility clinic and, therefore, likely represented a subgroup of the total population of sub-fertile men.
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