Marriage may help fight cancer: Study

A new study points to marriage as a contributor to positive outcomes in patients' fight against cancer.

Married people seem to be at an advantage when it came to fighting cancer, according to the researchers.

Single men with cancer had a death rate 27 per cent higher than that of single male patients, whereas the death rate in single females was 19 per cent higher than their married counterparts.

"The effects that we find were actually quite notable," said study author Scarlett Lin Gomez, a research scientist with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, cbsnews.com reported. "They are comparable to some of the more

clinical factors we often see that are associated with cancer prognosis, like stage of disease or certain types of treatment."

Furthermore, the advantage appeared to rely solely on the emotional bonds of matrimony, and had little to do with the financial advantages that marriage offered, Gomez added.

"These patterns were very minimally explained by the married patients having greater economic resources," Gomez said. "Specifically, we looked at health insurance and we looked at living in a higher socioeconomic status

neighborhood. Even though these played a small role, they really didn't explain the greater survival among the married."

It needs to the noted, however, that the study only found an association between marital status and cancer prognosis; and not a direct cause-and-effect link.

Married people generally had better health insurance and lived in better neighborhoods, but even after factoring in the financial advantages, single patients still fared worse.

''It seems that the major contributing factor is greater social support, and less social isolation, among married patients,'' said study leader Gomez of the University of California, San Diego.

''Having a strong support system can have meaningful impacts on the odds of survival after a cancer diagnosis,'' Lin added by email.

The study involved 783,000 patients diagnosed with cancer in California from 2000 through 2009, including about 387,000 who had died by 2012.