Less kidney cancer for men who work in sun

ROCKVILLE, Md., March 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say men who work in the sun have less kidney cancer risk than workers who do not work in the sun.

Sara Karami of the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Md., and colleagues observed a 24 percent to 38 percent reduction in kidney cancer risk with increasing occupational sunlight exposure among men.

Karami says the findings, which did not include other factors such as non-occupational sunlight exposure, raise only the possibility of a link between sunlight exposure and kidney cancer risk.

"They clearly need to be replicated in other populations and in studies that use better estimates of long-term ultraviolet exposure and vitamin D intake," Karami says in a statement.

The study, published online in Cancer, did not observe an association between occupational sunlight exposure and kidney cancer risk among females in the study. The researchers propose this may be due to biological or behavioral gender differences or confounding by an unmeasured factor such as activity levels.