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Marriage breakdown affects cancer survival chances: research

People whose marriage has broken down at the time they are diagnosed with cancer do not live as long as those who are widowed, divorced or had never got married, research has shown.

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It is well known that married couples enjoy better health than unmarried and divorced people but there has been little research carried out on the various different types of people who are not married.

A study in the journal Cancer suggests that the stress associated with marital separation affects the body's immune system and its ability to fend off the disease.

Dr Gwen Sprehn, of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis found that married cancer patients had the highest survival rates with 63.3 per cent alive five years after diagnosis and 57.5 per cent still alive after ten years.

Where as separated patients had the worst survival with 45.4 per cent still alive after five years and 36.8 per cent still living ten years later.

Even widowed patients had a better chance of living with 47.2 per cent alive five years after diagnosis and 40.9 per cent alive after ten.

Just over half of divorced patients were still alive after five years and 45.6 per cent were after ten years.

Survival among never married patients was 57.3 per cent at five years and 51.7 per cent at ten years.

The data came from the records of 3.79 million patients diagnosed with cancer between 1973 and 2004 and included in the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results database.

Dr Sprehn said psychological interventions to reduce stress may impact the immune system and improve survival among those disadvantaged by their marital status.

She said: "Patients who are going through separation at the time of diagnosis may be a particularly vulnerable population for whom intervention could be prioritised.

"Identification of relationship-related stress at time of diagnosis could lead to early interventions which might favourably impact survival. Ideally, future research will study marital status in more detail over time and also address individual differences in genetic profile and biomarkers related to stress, immune, and cancer pathways in order to determine mechanisms which might underlie this possible critical period for cancer pathogenesis."