Bad news guys: a new study from the University of Montréal has found that promiscuous gay men have a significantly higher risk of developing prostate cancer than either straight men or gay guys who’ve only had one partner.
Marie-Elise Parent and Marie-Claude Rousseau published the findings, which were part of the wider research project PROtEuS (Prostate Cancer & Environment Study). They surveyed 3,208 men, just under half of whom were diagnosed with prostate cancer between September 2005 and August 2009.
The study found that men who had had sex with more than 20 women across their lifetime had a 28% reduced risk of developing prostate cancer of any type, and a 19% reduction for the more aggressive types. The researchers aren’t certain why this is, but they have an idea:
“It is possible that having many female sexual partners results in a higher frequency of ejaculations, whose protective effect against prostate cancer has been previously observed in cohort studies.”
The bad news is that not only do gay men not seem to enjoy these benefits, but their risk actually goes up. Men who have slept with more than 20 men were twice as likely to develop the disease than those who’d never slept with a man, and 500% more likely to develop a less aggressive form of the cancer. Parent says that they only have “highly speculative” hypotheses as to why this is the case, but it might come down to bottoming:
“It could come from greater exposure to STIs, or it could be that anal intercourse produces physical trauma to the prostate.”
Still, there’s a bit of schadenfreude for promiscuous gays: virgins were also predicted to have twice the risk of being diagnosed with the disease, which just seems really unfair.