Published in Cancer Research Communications, the study analysed more than four million cancer cases across 12 states, covering a population of over 100 million people, between 2015 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Researchers focused on adults aged 30 and older, and compared cancer rates between two groups: those who were married or had been married, including divorced and widowed, and those who had never married.<\/p>\n
The findings revealed that people who had never been married faced significantly higher rates of cancer. The elevated risk was seen across nearly all major cancer types, and was especially pronounced for cancers linked to preventable risk factors such as smoking, alcohol use, infections and reproductive health.<\/p>\n
Men who had never married were about 70pc more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than married men, while it was about 85pc more likely among women who had never married.<\/p>\n
Never-married men had about five times the rate of anal cancer, and never-married women had nearly triple the rate of cervical cancer. Both cancers are strongly associated with HPV infection and are influenced by screening and prevention.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re not married, you should be paying extra attention to cancer risk factors<\/p>\n
Researchers also noticed differences when looking at race and marital status together. Never-married black men had the highest overall cancer rates of any group in the study. Married black men had lower cancer rates than married white men, suggesting that marriage was linked to particularly strong health benefits in that group.<\/p>\n
The study also found that the association between marital status and cancer risk was stronger in adults over 50, suggesting that long-term exposure to lifestyle and healthcare differences may compound over time.<\/p>\n
Married people are more likely to go in for regular check-ups, get diagnosed earlier when something is wrong, and stick with their treatment plans, researchers said. They also often have more financial stability and stronger social support, which can make it easier to maintain healthier habits and seek medical care sooner.<\/p>\n
Researchers are careful to point out that their study doesn\u2019t mean marriage directly prevents cancer or that people need to be married to stay healthy.<\/p>\n
Instead, they say the differences in health outcomes are more likely linked to factors that often come with marriage rather than marriage itself being the protective factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re not married, you should be paying extra attention to cancer risk factors, getting any screenings you may need and staying up to date on health care,\u201d said Frank Penedo, study author and associate director for population sciences at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published in Cancer Research Communications, the study analysed more than four million cancer cases across 12 states, covering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60,59303,51264],"class_list":{"0":"post-392850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-living-with-cancer","12":"tag-the-independent"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}