A study suggests that marital status may play a role in your risk of developing cancer, with people who have never married facing higher rates of the disease.
Published last month in the Cancer Research Communications, the study examined data from more than 500 million person-years across 12 U.S. states between 2015 and 2022.
Person-years is a unit of measurement combining the number of people in a study with the time each person is observed.
Researchers examined cancer incidence among adults aged 30 and older, comparing those who had never married with individuals who were currently or previously married.
The findings found that never-married men had a 68 per cent higher chance of developing cancer, while never-married women had an 83 per cent higher rate of incidence compared, to their ever-married counterparts.
Lead author Paulo Pinheiro told in an email the associations appeared stronger in women because reproductive cancers, such as endometrial and ovarian cancer, are “naturally more common among never-married women, because marital status is historically associated with parity and reproductive patterns at the population level.”
These differences were observed across nearly all major cancer types, demographic groups and age categories.
Importantly, the gap was especially pronounced for cancers linked to preventable risk factors. For example, cancers associated with smoking, alcohol use and infections — such as anal and cervical cancers — showed some of the largest disparities.
When asked what this suggests about prevention and health-care access, Pinheiro explained that cancer prevention is “strongly shaped by social and behavioral environments.”
He said this includes health behaviors, vaccination uptake, preventive care, and health-care engagement that may all be influenced by social support systems and life circumstances.
“The findings suggest that certain socially less-supported populations may benefit from more proactive prevention and outreach efforts,” Pinheiro explained.
In men, rates of anal cancer were more than five times higher among those who had never married, while women who had never married faced nearly triple the rate of cervical cancer.
By contrast, cancers less influenced by behaviour or screen — such as prostate, breast and thyroid cancers — showed smaller differences between marital groups.