People who develop cervical or testicular cancer, diseases that can lower sexual desire and fertility, are at a greater risk of getting a divorce from their spouse, a Norwegian study shows.
Women who develop cervical tumors are 40 percent more likely to get divorced as compared to 20 percent of men who develop testicular cancer, according to the study presented Thursday at the European Cancer Conference in Barcelona.
The incidence of divorce isn't higher when a partner develops another form of the disease but the study also found that the divorce rate actually saw a decline in the years following diagnosis for most cancers.
Astri Syse, a researcher at the Norwegian Cancer Registry in Oslo, Norway, who led the study, said, "The increased divorce rate may be related to factors associated with sexuality and intimacy."
The two cancers affect sexual intimacy thus resulting in decreases in sexual desire, enjoyment and fertility. The researchers arrived at the conclusion by examining the divorce rates of 215,000 cancer survivors and couples with divorce registration data between 1974 and 2001.
Women with cervical cancer had an increased risk of divorce of 69 percent at age 20 years, but this risk was reduced to 19 percent at 60 years, the authors said.
While in case of men too, the same tendency was seen. The increased risk of divorce was estimated to 34 percent at 20 years, while it was estimated to fall 16 percent below the risk of the general population at 60 years.
Cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer among women and kills 250,000 a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. However, testicular cancer is the most treatable of all tumors. It mainly affects young men and has a cure rate of more than 90 percent in newly diagnosed patients.
