Men: Like Tans? Maybe Reconsider, If You Want to Keep Your Testicles
If you tan well, you may be at higher risk of testiculat cancer, a new study has found. We've long been warned about the skin cancer risk, but now here's one men might not brush off so lightly. A gene important in skin tanning has been linked to higher risk for testicular cancer in white men, according to newswise.com. "Nearly 80 percent of white men carry a variant form of this gene, which increased risk of testicular cancer up to threefold in the study," newswise.com reports. “It appears that this particular (gene) variant could help protect light-skinned individuals from UV skin damage, like burning or cancer, by promoting the tanning process, but it permits testicular stem cells to grow in the presence of DNA damage, when they are supposed to stop growing," the Web site quotes Douglas Bell, Ph.D., author on the paper and researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH. In the study, conducted by Xuting Wang...