STD Surprisingly Tied to
Low Prostate Cancer Risk
Excerpt By Jacqueline Stenson, Reuter's Health

SAN DIEGO (Reuters Health) - In an unexpected result, Finnish researchers found that men who have been infected with the sexually transmitted disease (STD) chlamydia appear to have a reduced risk of prostate cancer.

"I'd think infection would increase the risk of prostate cancer," said study author Dr. Tarja Anttila, an epidemiologist at the National Public Health Institute in Oulu, Finland. "I can't explain the reason."

An earlier study by Anttila and colleagues found that chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that often causes no symptoms, increased a woman's risk of cervical cancer, possibly by damaging DNA in cervical cells. They suspected the same might be true for prostate cancer in men.

So the researchers used blood banks in Finland, Norway and Sweden to identify men whose blood samples taken at some point over a 30-year period contained chlamydia antibodies. Antibodies indicate that either infection was present at the time the sample was taken or had occurred sometime earlier. Then the researchers searched a national cancer registry to see if any of the 738 men with chlamydia antibodies had been diagnosed with prostate cancer later in life. These men were compared with agroup of 2,271 men who did not have chlamydia antibodies present in their blood sample.

Overall, chlamydia infection was associated with a 31% lower risk of prostate cancer, Anttila reported here Saturday at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. And the higher the antibody levels, the lower the cancer risk. Lower antibody levels are generally present when the infection has been treated, she noted.

Chlamydia is caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis and can be remedied with antibiotics.

The findings are not an endorsement for avoiding chlamydia treatment in an effort to ward off the malignancy. Anttila said more studies are needed to determine if there truly is a relationship between chlamydia infection and prostate cancer, and if so, why.

Reference Source 89

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