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The Association Between Testicular Cancer and Female Reproductive Cancers: A Systematic Review

The most common neoplasm found in young to middle-aged men is testicular cancer (TCa). This disease not only poses a risk of early death, but can also affect a male's fertility and testosterone levels and can diminish one's mental health and/or quality of life. One particular line of research that is emerging in the field is a possible genetic association of TCa with female reproductive cancers. We employed a systematic review to assess the methodological quality of articles that met the inclusionary criteria. To be selected for this review, articles had to go through a primary, secondary, and tertiary screening procedure using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement guidelines. Four studies were selected, and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to measure the quality of each nonrandomized, case-control or cohort study. Two articles received perfect scores, one case-control study received a near-perfect score of 8 out of 9 stars, and only one out of the four included studies received 5 out of 9 stars. Upon organizing and analyzing the data, we found a significantly increased risk (20%) of female reproductive cancer among women who had a father with TCa. Also, we found that men were 12% more likely to develop TCa if they had a sister with female reproductive cancer, and 16% more likely if their mother had ovarian, endometrial, breast or cervical cancer. The goal of this review was to assess the overall strength of association, or lack thereof, between TCa and female reproductive cancers. Findings of this review suggest that an association exists between these discordant forms of cancer. There were significant risks found between mothers and sons, backed by substantial evidence of an X-linked inheritance pattern. This information has the potential to improve our knowledge of cancer etiology and treatment.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses-1919
Date01 January 2020
CreatorsChurch, Alyssa
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHonors Undergraduate Theses

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