You are seeing this message because your Web browser does not support basic Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing and what you can do to make your experience on this site better.


ABOUT JAMA
Advanced Search

Welcome   | My Account | E-mail Alerts | Access Rights | Sign In


  Vol. 291 No. 13, April 7, 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS
  JAMA
  •  Online Features
  Original Contribution
 This Article
 •Full text
 •PDF
 •Send to a friend
 • Save in My Folder
 •Save to citation manager
 •Permissions
 Citing Articles
 •Citation map
 •Citing articles on HighWire
 •Citing articles on ISI (19)
 •Contact me when this article is cited
 Related Content
 •Related letters
 •Similar articles in JAMA
 Topic Collections
 •Men's Health
 •Prostate Disease
 •Oncology
 •Prostate Cancer
 •Alert me on articles by topic
 Social Bookmarking
  Add to CiteULike Add to Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Add to Digg Add to Reddit Add to Technorati
What's this?

Ejaculation Frequency and Subsequent Risk of Prostate Cancer

Michael F. Leitzmann, MD; Elizabeth A. Platz, ScD; Meir J. Stampfer, MD; Walter C. Willett, MD; Edward Giovannucci, MD

JAMA. 2004;291:1578-1586.

Context  Sexual activity has been hypothesized to play a role in the development of prostate cancer, but epidemiological data are virtually limited to case-control studies, which may be prone to bias because recall among individuals with prostate cancer could be distorted as a consequence of prostate malignancy or ongoing therapy.

Objective  To examine the association between ejaculation frequency, which includes sexual intercourse, nocturnal emission, and masturbation and risk of prostate cancer.

Design, Setting, and Participants  Prospective study using follow-up data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (February 1, 1992, through January 31, 2000) of 29 342 US men aged 46 to 81 years, who provided information on history of ejaculation frequency on a self-administered questionnaire in 1992 and responded to follow-up questionnaires every 2 years to 2000. Ejaculation frequency was assessed by asking participants to report the average number of ejaculations they had per month during the ages of 20 to 29 years, 40 to 49 years, and during the past year (1991).

Main Outcome Measure  Incidence of total prostate cancer.

Results  During 222 426 person-years of follow-up, there were 1449 new cases of total prostate cancer, 953 organ-confined cases, and 147 advanced cases of prostate cancer. Most categories of ejaculation frequency were unrelated to risk of prostate cancer. However, high ejaculation frequency was related to decreased risk of total prostate cancer. The multivariate relative risks for men reporting 21 or more ejaculations per month compared with men reporting 4 to 7 ejaculations per month at ages 20 to 29 years were 0.89 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.73-1.10); ages 40 to 49 years, 0.68 (95% CI, 0.53-0.86); previous year, 0.49 (95% CI, 0.27-0.88); and averaged across a lifetime, 0.67 (95% CI, 0.51-0.89). Similar associations were observed for organ-confined prostate cancer. Ejaculation frequency was not statistically significantly associated with risk of advanced prostate cancer.

Conclusions  Our results suggest that ejaculation frequency is not related to increased risk of prostate cancer.


Author Affiliations: Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Md (Dr Leitzmann); Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Md (Dr Platz); Departments of Epidemiology and Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass (Drs Stampfer, Willett, and Giovannucci); and Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass (Drs Stampfer, Willett, and Giovannucci).



Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati     What's this?

RELATED LETTERS

Frequency of Ejaculation and Risk of Prostate Cancer
Graham G. Giles, Gianluca Severi, Dallas R. English, and John L. Hopper
JAMA. 2004;292(3):329.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Frequency of Ejaculation and Risk of Prostate Cancer—Reply
Michael F. Leitzmann and Edward Giovannucci
JAMA. 2004;292(3):329.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Acute inflammatory proteins constitute the organic matrix of prostatic corpora amylacea and calculi in men with prostate cancer
Sfanos et al.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2009;106:3443-3448.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I Produced by Seminal Vesicles: Relationship to Intraepithelial Basal Cell Hyperplasia in the Prostate
Garcia et al.
Clin. Cancer Res. 2007;13:3140-3146.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Sexually Transmitted Infections, Prostatitis, Ejaculation Frequency, and the Odds of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms
Sutcliffe et al.
Am J Epidemiol 2005;162:898-906.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Adenocarcinoma of the Prostate: Epidemiological Trends, Screening, Diagnosis, and Surgical Management of Localized Disease
Routh and Leibovich
Mayo Clin Proc. 2005;80:899-907.
ABSTRACT  

Acne in Adolescence and Cause-specific Mortality: Lower Coronary Heart Disease but Higher Prostate Cancer Mortality: The Glasgow Alumni Cohort Study
Galobardes et al.
Am J Epidemiol 2005;161:1094-1101.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

A hypothesis on the sexual behaviour of men who are destined to develop prostate cancer
James
Int J Epidemiol 2005;34:483-485.
FULL TEXT  

Frequency of Ejaculation and Risk of Prostate Cancer
Giles et al.
JAMA 2004;292:329-329.
FULL TEXT  

Frequent ejaculation may be linked to decreased risk of prostate cancer
Gottlieb
BMJ 2004;328:851-851.
FULL TEXT  





HOME | CURRENT ISSUE | PAST ISSUES | TOPIC COLLECTIONS | CME | SUBMIT | SUBSCRIBE | HELP
CONDITIONS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY | CONTACT US | SITE MAP
 
© 2004 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.