As research suggests infertile men are twice as likely to get breast cancer, Breast Cancer Now outlines signs of the disease and risk factors for men.
Finding out you’re infertile can be devastating whether you’re male or female. But for men, the inability to conceive children naturally could be dangerous too, as new research suggests infertile men may be twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those without fertility issues.
While breast cancer in men is rare, it still happens, because men have a small amount of breast tissue – although the underlying cause is largely unknown. The new research, by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR; icr.ac.uk) as part of the Breast Cancer Now (breastcancernow.org) Male Breast Cancer Study, looked at 1,998 men newly-diagnosed with the disease over a 12-year period, and as well as the infertility link, it found there were significantly more men with no children among those who’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.
