Hormonal and Reproductive Factors and Risk of Upper Gastrointestinal Cancers in Men: A Prospective Cohort Study Within the UK Biobank

In a prospective cohort study of 219,425 men from the UK Biobank, researchers found that frontal male pattern baldness was associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.52. During the 8-year follow-up, 309 cases of oesophageal cancer and 210 cases of gastric cancer were identified. The study did not find significant associations between other hormonal and reproductive factors and the risk of oesophageal or gastric cancers. This suggests that male pattern baldness, which is often considered a proxy for sex hormone levels, may be linked to gastric cancer risk, and highlights the need for future studies to directly test circulating sex steroid hormone levels in relation to upper gastrointestinal cancer risk.