WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) -- For men with testicular cancer, survival comes at a price: New research suggests that those who recover from the disease face higher risks of long-term illness unrelated to tumors.

"Current patients with testicular cancer should be informed about the risk of short-term and particularly long-term side effects of their highly effective treatment," said Sophie D. Fossa, a professor at the University of Oslo in Norway and lead author of a study in the November issue of the journal BJUI.

The study found that one in four survivors will develop long-term neurological, hearing and circulatory problems. They are also nearly twice as likely to develop another form of cancer.

But there's good news, too. As many as four out of five survivors who try to become fathers are successful, the study authors noted.

"Patients can suffer considerable mental distress after having one testicle removed due to cancer, but this gradually decreases with treatment," Fossa said. "Gastrointestinal side effects are common during both chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and chemotherapy carries added risks like infections and blood clots. Long-term problems include secondary cancers, heart problems, and conditions related to lower hormone levels."

The researchers reviewed 40 studies published between 1990 and 2008. Among the findings:

• The drug bleomycin can cause lung problems if used before some types of surgery, especially in men 40 and older.
• Cisplatin-based chemotherapy can damage nerves in many patients, and one in five survivors suffers from hearing loss and tinnitus, also known as ringing in the ears.
• The avoidance of mediastinal radiotherapy has reduced the likelihood of long-lasting heart problems. But infra-diaphragmatic radiotherapy boosts death rates slightly.

"It is important to focus on reducing risks through healthy lifestyle choices and consider important issues like preserving future fertility," Fossa said. "We would also like to see screening guidelines developed to ensure that the long-term side effects are diagnosed and treated as early as possible."

More information

Learn more about testicular cancer from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

FRIDAY, Aug. 7 (HealthDay News) -- A man who drinks moderate or high amounts of alcohol over the course of his life appears to raise his risk for developing certain -- but not all -- kinds of cancer, a new crunching of quarter-century-old research data suggests.

The study, by Canadian researchers, found that the more men drink, the greater their risk for specific cancers. However, the link appears to involve mostly beer and spirit consumption, not wine. The study did not explore risk among women.

"We found that with lifetime alcohol consumption, cancer risk among men increases for some of the 13 cancers we looked at," said study author Andrea Benedetti, an assistant professor in the departments of medicine and epidemiology, biostatistics and occupational health at McGill University in Montreal. "Those include esophageal, colon, stomach, liver, lung and prostate cancers."

"And we also found that ... those with the highest consumption had a quite higher risk increase for these cancers, relative to lower-consumption drinkers," Benedetti said. She worked on the study while a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Quebec.

A report on the findings has been published online in Cancer Detection and Prevention.

Associations between alcohol consumption and cancer have been the subject of much study, the researchers pointed out, with indications that alcohol could be the prime culprit in up to 5 percent of deaths from all cancers combined.

One recent study specifically revealed that heavy drinking in particular raises the risk for developing aggressive prostate cancer in men while undermining the effectiveness of the popular prostate cancer prevention drug finasteride (Proscar). Another study suggested that, among women, even moderate drinking might elevate risk for breast, liver and other cancers.

The Canadian research team used data first collected in the 1980s for a study that sought to examine potential links between hundreds of occupational hazards and cancer risk.

Participants in that study were men between the ages of 35 and 70 who had been diagnosed with any of 20 cancers. Collected data included ethnicity, income, smoking history, diet and occupational exposures, as well as alcohol consumption patterns.

For the new study, the researchers focused on nearly 3,600 people for whom they had data on alcohol use as well as their cancer history. Types of cancer represented were bladder, colon, esophageal, kidney, liver, lung, Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, melanoma, pancreatic, prostate, rectal and stomach.

Among men considered "regular drinkers," defined as drinking on a daily or weekly basis, alcohol was linked to an increased risk for nearly half of the cancer types -- specifically, esophageal, stomach, colon, liver, lung and prostate cancer.

And the more alcohol that such regular drinkers consumed, the higher their risk rose relative to those who did not drink at all or drank infrequently, the study reported.

Although Benedetti noted that "wine consumption was not an issue," she also acknowledged that the researchers "weren't able to look at the impact of wine as much as we wanted to because we didn't have enough information available."

"And I wouldn't want to say that heavy wine drinking, for example, is OK," she cautioned. "But it appears from what we found that light and moderate drinking of wine is not linked to an increased risk for cancer, while light and moderate consumption of beer and spirits does have some risk attached to it."

However, William J. Blot, associate director of research at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn., questioned the impact that the study might have.

"This study looked at data that is actually 25 years old," Blot said. "And it's been known for a long time that particularly heavy drinking can increase the risk for certain types of cancer."

"We've known, for example, for maybe 30 years now that heavy drinking increases the risk for esophageal cancer," he said. "And drinking and oral cancer of the oral cavity and larynx are also well-established risks. Those are the strongest associations previously identified, although pancreatic and liver cancers have also been linked in the past, while lung cancer has generally not been considered to be an alcohol-related cancer because, in reality, it's really almost impossible to de-link smokers from drinkers since the two behaviors tend to overlap so frequently."

Blot also noted that, when broken down by cancer type, the number of men with some of the cancers was "not particularly large."

The study included all types of cancer from the original study that had been diagnosed in at least 25 participants. The numbers ranged from a low of 28 men with liver cancer to a high of 700 with lung cancer.

"There have been other studies with quite a few more patients that, therefore, have more precise information," Blot said. "So, I would say there is really nothing new or striking about this finding."

More information

The American Cancer Society has more on alcohol and cancer  .