Bladder cancer
Pregnancy may help protect against bladder cancer
Pregnancy seems to confer some protection against bladder cancer in mice, scientists have found.
Female mice that had never become pregnant had approximately 15 times as much cancer in their bladders as their counterparts that had become pregnant, according to new findings by investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Their work appears online as a rapid communication in the journal Urology.
The researchers led by Jay Reeder, Ph.D., are focusing on a fact that has puzzled doctors and scientists for decades: Why does bladder cancer, the fifth most common malignancy in the nation, affect about three times as many men as women? Scientists long blamed men’s historically higher rates of smoking and greater exposure to dangers in the workplace, but the gap has persisted even as women swelled the workforce and took up smoking in greater numbers.
