Pot Smoking Linked to Testicular Cancer
Sunday, Jul 12, 2009 | Updated 9:22 AM PDT
Nether regions beware what the reefer has wrought.
Michael Phelps and Phish aficionados watch out. Smoking pot has been linked to a nasty form of testicular cancer, according to new research.
Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle compared pot, alcohol and smoking habits of 369 testicular cancer patients, 18- to 44-year-olds, with those of 1,000 healthy subjects. Their results were published in the Feb. 9 issue of Cancer.
They found that men who smoked the ganja weekly or who were potheads as teenagers may have doubled the risk of developing nonseminoma, HealthDay News reported.
Nonseminoma is a less common, but faster spreading, type of testicular cancer than its twin, seminoma. Nonseminoma occurs in 40 percent of cases compared to seminoma, which affects 60 percent of cases.
Together both forms of testicular cancer make up only one percent of all cancer cases among American men. But testicular cancer is the most common form of cancer for men aged 15 to 34, HeathDay reported.
The researchers discovered that testicles had receptors for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, which put them at risk for developing disease.
Still, they stressed that more research was needed to confirm a causal relationship between weed and cancer.
