Elsevier

The Lancet

Volume 320, Issue 8298, 11 September 1982, Pages 581-583
The Lancet

Hypothesis
IMPORTANCE OF THE MALE FACTOR IN CANCER OF THE CERVIX

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(82)90661-4Get rights and content

Abstract

A woman's risk of cervical cancer is generally thought to be related to her sexual behaviour. The sexual background of her male partners is also important. In some societies, a woman's risk of cancer of the cervix will depend less on her own behaviour than on that of her partner. Male sexual behaviour, particularly in relation to prostitution, may account for two hitherto unexplained features of the epidemiology of this disease—the extremely high incidence in Latin America and the decline in mortality this century. If this is so and men carry the aetiological agent, it will be important to discover whether they do so for short or long periods.

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      Cervical cancer (CC) is caused by sexually transmitted high-risk (HR) types of human papillomavirus (HPV) [1]. A woman's risk of HPV infection and CC is therefore governed by her sexual behavior and the sexual behavior of her partner(s) [2,3]. Characteristics including age at first sexual intercourse and lifetime number of sexual partners have been consistently associated with a rise in HPV [4] and invasive CC risk [5], but other aspects such as a population's sexual habits, e.g., age difference (hereafter referred to as “Adiff”) within heterosexual couples, have seldom been studied [6].

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